Martialis

CONCERNING SAINT MARTIALIS,

APOSTLE AND BISHOP OF THE LIMOUSINS IN GAUL.

PRELIMINARY COMMENTARY

On his age and his apocryphal Acts.

Martialis, Bishop and Apostle of Limoges in Gaul (St.)

BY D. P.

Called the Apostle of Limoges, Limoges, powerful in the age of Julius Caesar, an old Episcopal city, in Aquitania Prima, is so situated between the metropolises of Bourges and Bordeaux that it is subject to the latter's Parlement in temporal matters, and is suffragan to the former's Archbishop in spiritual matters. This city glories in having received the light of the Christian faith, by the preaching of St. Martialis: whom, not content to call its first Bishop, it also calls an Apostle, after the matter was twice keenly debated in the Synod of Limoges in the year 1029, and at Bourges in the year 1032, and finally defined by the authority of the Apostolic See, not only because he is believed to have first preached the faith to them, for the part affirming. Yet this definition did not proceed from the cause already indicated alone, now received by common usage for establishing the title of Apostle; but also from the supposition, unproved, that the same St. Martialis was of the number of the 72 Disciples of Christ, whom even the Greeks call Apostles; whence some pretended that he should be named in the public Litanies with the Apostles; whom others contended should be retained in the order of Confessor Pontiffs. A controversy of slight moment indeed, nor worthy in judgment of such uproar. And so, that being moreover set aside, but as one of the 72 Disciples. inquiry began to be made in a more advanced and more curious century, into the origin and foundations of that prejudice, and it began rightly to be doubted whether the age of St. Martialis can be defined more certainly than from St. Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks, book 1, ch. 30, who, following the Acts of St. Saturninus, states that, sent with six others into Gaul, he began to act as Bishop of Toulouse in the consulship of Decius and Gratus, that is, in the year of Christ 250; and so Martialis, one of them, established his Episcopal see at Limoges not many years before: which is also made probable by the small number of successors ascribed to him in the most ancient Catalogues, Bosquet, distrustful of such great antiquity; up to the times of Constantine; as sufficient to fill one century, as it is useless for filling three. For if it were established that the third among them, Actius or Acticus, lived (as the Sammarthani have it) in the year 310 or 301, nothing would be more ill-advised than to raise the first before them, Martialis, to the age of Christ dwelling on earth, with only Aurelian and Emelius intervening.

[2] Our master Godefrid Henschen, although more inclined toward that opinion, nevertheless took care not to define anything, and was content, in St. Paul of Narbonne on March 22, with those things which he gathered from Francis Bosquet, Praetor of Narbonne, in the first volume of the Histories of the Gallican Church, about the year 1636; with an Appendix of ancient monuments reprinted; which things he had already submitted to the judgment of the learned and approved by most. he presents a synopsis of the Acts, The same Bosquet, having undertaken in book 1 to treat individually of those believed to be disciples of St. Peter in Gaul; finally at no. 22, about to conclude that part of his assumed argument, pronounces thus: Although I revere tradition, whatever it may be; nevertheless all these things (namely those concerning the Saints, Memmius of Châlons, Fronto of Périgueux, George of Le Velay, Clement of Metz, Saturninus of Toulouse, Mansuetus of Toul, Eucharius, Valerius, and Maternus of Trier, Savinianus, Potentianus, and Altinus, Apostles of Sens, as sent by Peter, which are circulated) all these, he says, so far from historical truth, I do not persuade myself. For the love of antiquity has overlaid the ancient narratives with so many errors … that, how one should proceed, I do not recognize. And so I hasten … and I dispatch one Martialis, the chief disciple of Peter.

[3] Martialis (according to those Acts of his which are circulated) baptized by Peter his kinsman, at the command of Christ, his parents being Marcellus and Elizabeth, by which he is said to be a disciple of Christ, was present at the chief actions of the Lord. Having followed Peter to Antioch, then to Rome, he is sent into Gaul, with Alpinianus and Austriclianus, to preach the faith of Christ; on the journey, when Austriclianus had died, at the village of Elsa, having received Peter's staff, he raises him; he frees Tullus's daughter from a demon, the daughter of Arnulf; at Nerva, the son of the Lord of the Castle, kinsman of the Emperor Nero, slain by a demon, he restores to life in the name of Jesus; and he baptizes with three thousand men. At the village of Ergedius, destroying idols, sent by Peter to Limoges, he is beaten by the priests of the temples; who, when the vengeance of God threatened, are blinded; nor do they receive light again until, the demons confessing Christ as God, all the idols being shattered, they themselves clung wrapped around the feet of Martialis. Having entered the city of Limoges, he is received in hospitality by Susanna; he baptizes her with her daughter Valeria; he heals a madman; beaten by the Flamens, he is cast into prison. through many miracles, For Martialis's freedom nature conspires, on every side lightnings and thunders disturb the heavens, the earth is shaken with tremors, the Flamens, struck by lightning, fall, and the people, moved by prodigies, run to the prison; Martialis, triumphing over the demon, comes out, the crowd acclaiming; he raises the Flamens; and when their testimony about Christ's divinity was heard, he baptizes twenty-two thousand of the men.

[4] Susanna lived on, her goods being left to the Church; and her daughter Valeria, after the killing of Valeria, converted by him, consecrates herself a Virgin to God: but when her betrothed, Duke Stephen (these are the words of the Acts), holding the principality from the river Rhone all the way to the Ocean sea, having power to rule the people of the Gascons and the Goths up to the Pyrenees mountains, had come to Limoges to wed her; Valeria, already betrothed to Christ, refuses the marriage, and by Stephen's order is beheaded. Stephen, however, repented, and prostrate at the feet of Martialis

he was received by Christ's mercy. The Bishop baptizes him with his whole retinue; gifts are conferred upon the church; provisions and revenues are appointed for the Clergy; Hospital houses are built, and at Valeria's tomb a church is built by Stephen. to have founded a church; Meanwhile, summoned by Nero with his army, Stephen proceeds to Rome; he visits Peter the Apostle, and with bare feet, with all his army, prostrates himself before him. The Apostle rejoices that so great a multitude has been enrolled by Martialis in the ranks of Jesus Christ; and having heard the prodigies of his disciple, he grants Stephen pardon for the killing of Valeria. Two hundred pounds of gold, given to him by Nero, Stephen offers to Peter: he orders them to be conveyed to Martialis, and churches to be built. The army returns into Gaul, and under the leadership of Stephen hastens to Martialis, to give thanks for the return. When it had encamped at the river Vienne, and the demons being driven out, Hildebert, the son of Count Arcadius, was plunged under by demons. Martialis commands the demons; the body is restored to the bank; the demons themselves appear in the guise of Ethiopians, and declare marvelous things about hell and their own names. At last Hildebert is roused; he describes whatever he had seen in the lower world, and the very fire of purgatory; then he shaved his head, professing a severe discipline: his father Arcadius, in gratitude for so great a benefit, confers goods upon the Church.

[5] to have converted all Aquitaine to the faith; Stephen, sending edicts through all the nations subject to him, orders idols to be destroyed and Christ to be worshipped; and spending the rest of his life in religious worship, four times, through the four seasons of the year, yearly, with his subject peoples visits Martialis; and in hair-cloth and ashes and fasting he devotes three days in the church of St. Stephen to prayers. Now through all Gaul, by the fame of his miracles and the holiness of his life most well known, Martialis frees Sigebert, Count of Bordeaux, from paralysis, his staff being given to Benedicta, that man's wife. At her urging the idols of Bordeaux are demolished; the temple of "the Unknown," who was worshipped, being spared for God's use: the whole Royal court accepts the faith of Christ, and many thousands of men are baptized by Martialis. Again renowned for miracles is his staff, which, religiously kept by Benedicta, is preserved to the present day. This is that staff of Martialis, which he is commonly believed to have received from Peter. Having received word of the martyrdom of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, Martialis completes the begun church: he prepares tombs for himself, for Stephen, and for Valeria; he dedicates oratories to the Protomartyr and the Apostles; he adorns the church with lamps, golden crosses, and most precious treasures; and with great display, in the presence of Duke Stephen, and with foreign guests ministering, he celebrates its dedication, and to have died in A.D. 74. illustrious with the casting-out of demons and miracles, which falls in the last year of Nero. He establishes forty Clerics in that church; he builds a hospital house for the sustenance of five hundred poor; and consecrates Aurelian as his future successor. Then, to go on foot around all Gaul, and to preach the word of the Lord, at last issuing a broad decree, that all Aquitanians should yearly four times visit the church of Limoges; with the day of his repose near, he summons the Aquitanians; Mass having been celebrated, he gives a discourse at the Calcine Gate; he blesses the people, and renders his soul to God, in the 28th year of his Episcopate, the 74th of Christ, the 3rd of Vespasian, the 59th of his own age, on the day before the Kalends of July.

[6] The author is alleged to be Aurelian his successor, but falsely: These things are from the Acts of St. Martialis, which Aurelian, his disciple and successor, is said to have written. But who, even glancing through them, will recognize the legitimate name of the Author? … Certainly that Aurelian, Martialis's disciple, wrote these, is most manifestly false; and even those who assert them, write that they were excerpted only from the Acts of Aurelian. But at what time these first appeared, is uncertain: unless, however, conjecture deceives us, they seem to have been composed a little before the second translation of Martialis, which happened in the year of Christ 994. For the writer of the miracles which appeared in the second Translation declares that the ancient Acts of St. Martialis perished, plundered by the barbarian nations laying waste Aquitaine, and that others were substituted for them. whereas those Acts were written much later. Therefore after the Barbarians were driven from Aquitaine, the Life of Martialis was restored, some years before the second Translation. Thence arose the opinion of his Apostleship in the minds of the common people, at last asserted in the Council of the Aquitanians in the year 1031; whatever to the contrary Jordan, Bishop of Limoges, from the old custom of his diocese, might bring forward as a most certain law. For up to those times it was believed that Martialis had been sent by the Roman Bishop, and had lived in Gaul around the years of Decius, and that within those years his disciples had preached through Gaul: among whom Ausonius, Bishop of Angoulême, under Crocus, King of the Vandals, around the year of Christ 360, suffered. Nor do other times occur for the most widespread preaching of Martialis, than the 38 years of ecclesiastical peace, from Severus to Decius.

[7] Thus far Bosquet; and for the fuller confirmation of what has been said, The same is maintained by John Cordes in Part 2 of his Histories, he produces a Dissertation, on the time when St. Martialis was sent into Aquitaine, from a French manuscript of Master John Cordes, Priest and Canon of Limoges, turned into Latin speech: I believe, so that his opinion might fall more gently upon the people of Limoges, when they saw it approved by their own fellow-citizen, the more learned among them. Of this Dissertation, not yet composed, but still passing among the Author's hands, Claude Robert makes mention in his Gallia Christiana, printed in the year 1626; having professed that from his manuscript he gives a Catalogue of the Bishops of Limoges, more correct than John Chenu had given five years before. through the Dissertation to be given here from Bosquet. But the Sammarthani, when they had read the same Dissertation already published by Bosquet, extending Robert's subject into four volumes, under the same title of Gallia Christiana, in the year 1656, omitting the synopsis of the Acts of St. Martialis which he had proposed; preferred to refer their reader to that Dissertation. Bosquet's book has long since been most rare, and in its bulk small, brought to few outside Gaul; wherefore I think it worth the trouble to insert the whole Dissertation in this place.

[8] But because, beyond Bosquet's own meaning, beyond certainly what he himself can prove, De Marca, writing that the faith was preached earlier, Cordes extends the authorities of Gregory of Tours and Sulpicius, the last of whom seems to defer the whole preaching of the Christian faith in Gaul longer than is fitting, I will subjoin to it the Letter of the Archbishop of Toulouse, afterward of Paris, Peter de Marca, to Henri de Valois, on the time when the faith of Christ was first received in Gaul: which Letter, as it will easily persuade that Cordes was too severe; so it will show, as regards St. Martialis, that to no one, however much he strives, can anything solid suffice, on which so great an age of his might be founded. For coming to this point, de Marca says: This one thing, concerning St. Martialis is weak: he says, is held in the old Martyrologies, that he was Bishop of Limoges. Yet the ancient Acts of his Life (such as Bosquet has now given us in synopsis) teach that he was one of the 70 Disciples of the Lord, and sent by the Apostle Peter to the Aquitanians: which tradition the Synod of Limoges embraced: but how little credit can be given to both here, is clear from the foregoing synopsis.

[9] As to the Martyrologies, all the copies of the Hieronymian which the old Martyrologies say only was a Bishop; have, at the end of this day, inscribed, At Limoges the deposition of St. Martialis the Bishop; and the Lucca and Echternach codices, most ancient, written more than a thousand years ago, add, and Confessor; as also Ado, Rabanus, and Notker. Bede, since he had found no Acts, abstained from his commemoration, in that which we believe to be the genuine one he gave; but he who supplemented Bede in the Arras, Liège, and Tournai manuscripts, Florus of Lyon, more ancient than Ado and Usuard, added to the aforesaid words of the older manuscripts; Who, sent from the city of Rome by Bl. Peter into Gaul, began to preach in the city of Limoges; and the rites of the idols being overthrown, the city being now filled with belief in God, he departed from the world. If these are truly Florus's words, up to Florus, who followed Acts, as we suppose; then the opinion which believed Martialis to be a disciple of St. Peter, howsoever or wheresoever born, must itself be older than Florus; and that in the Acts also, such as under the name of Aurelian were read before the Norman invasions, the same was asserted; and so that those Acts had their origin, not from Monks, Canons; but from those who, ever since the time of King Pepin, held the church of St. Martialis, whom Ademar mentions, to be more fully cited below.

[10] as also Usuard. Usuard (whom Claude Castellan, with arguments sufficiently certain, shows used Ado's Martyrology in such a way that he abbreviated, augmented, and corrected it) writing about the middle of the 9th century, sufficiently shows that certain Acts of St. Martialis had been read by him, when he says: At Limoges the city, of St. Martialis the Bishop, with two Presbyters Alpinianus and Stratoclinianus, whose life shone exceedingly with the signs of miracles: which words are read even today in the Roman as well, except that for Alpinianus is written Albinianus; and, conformably to the Acts and the usage of the writers of Limoges, Austriclianus is named. Concerning the first we have treated separately on his own day, April 27; concerning the other later writers will treat, on October 15. Therefore, both being here passed over, I proceed to treat here of Martialis alone; passing over even the Life, so fabulously and insipidly compiled, although we could give it gathered laboriously among themselves from various manuscripts by Rosweyde; the Acts being omitted, the Miracles are given, since it is enough that it be read after Abdias and in all the editions of Surius. From the Dissertation and Letter already promised, I shall pass to the Miracles, to be given from our ancient parchment codex; where first are narrated those performed at the tomb, ascribed to no time, and very probably all done before the Translation of the year 832. There follow others under a new heading, repeated from the time of King Clothar II, and from the 7th century of Christ; to which are appended those that followed the aforesaid Translation, by an Author (as it appears) contemporary.

[11] but those written in the year 994 are wished for. After these there remains for us to be desired the collection of those things which, seen in the second Translation of the year 994, Bosquet cites above at no. 6, which, however, we have not hitherto been able to obtain: their lack, however, will somehow be supplied by those things which, from a manuscript of St. Martin of Tournai, Joseph Ignatius of St. Anthony, a Carmelite, described for us; where are found the Acts and Miracles of St. Martialis, abbreviated in a fairly neat style, by an Author of the (as it appears) 11th century; who ends with that which befell himself, when he was giving a sermon about St. Martialis in the diocese of Agen. This Abbreviator, beginning from the first things done at the very burial, keeping no order of time, proceeds all the way to his own age; collecting only certain of the more important things, partly from the aforesaid, by no means to be repeated here; partly from others, which alone we took care to excerpt.

[12] The history of the Monastery is also given, After the Miracles I shall give the History of the Monastery of St. Martialis (in whose church, dedicated to St. Salvator, the body of the Saint is preserved to this day, by its founder Louis the Pious) gathered from two Chroniclers of the 12th century, Ademar and Gaufrid, the latter a monk of St. Martialis,

the latter being a Monk of St. Eparchius of Angoulême, with the aid of a Short Chronicle of Limoges: all of which, and also the Deeds of the Bishops of Limoges by Bernard Gui, Philippe Labbe inserted in volume I of his new Library; and they will teach us more certainly the continued veneration of St. Martialis, the various transportations of his body, and its elevations, and the miracles, than the Appendix of Gregorio Lombardelli, to the Life rendered into Italian and wondrously amplified, and published at Siena in the year 1595. For he wrote and amplified only by word of mouth things heard from a certain wandering Presbyter, who was traveling with him from Rome to Naples, and, for the sake of free travel-provisions, inventing many things at which he saw the good Gregorio gaping. Ademar and Gaufrid, using domestic writings, and in that place where they had for their good faith as many witnesses as inhabitants, narrate all things briefly and succinctly, which they had partly read and partly seen, with the best and most sincere fidelity, as the matter itself will show, compared with the synopsis of those things which Lombardelli says were recited to him, to be appended at the end.

DISSERTATION

of John Cordes, Priest and Canon of Limoges, On the time when the Saint was sent into Aquitaine, rendered from French into Latin by Francis Bosquet.

To the Reader, Daniel Papebroch.

Martialis, Bishop and Apostle of Limoges in Gaul (St.)

BY CORDES.

About to give this Dissertation, as also the following Letter, to be reprinted, just as I found it printed; I would wish it to be permitted me to divide it into three Paragraphs; and, the numbers of the Chapters being omitted, in our manner to apportion it into articles; and not only, also, by placing at the end of each Paragraph an Observation, to interpolate, insofar as it shall seem useful.

§. I. The opinion is proposed, which asserts that Martialis was sent by St. Peter; and the age of the Letters, and of the Life ascribed to Aurelian his successor, is demonstrated.

It is the common opinion of all, that Martialis, not only of Limoges, but also of the Aquitanians, is the Apostle; Of the two opinions on this matter, since he came into Aquitaine to be the first to promulgate the faith of Christ. That he was also the first Bishop of Limoges, is established among all, since he fixed the Episcopal See in the city of Limoges. Only about the time when he was sent is there dispute. In which matter I observe two opinions. One reports that he, of the seventy Disciples, having followed Peter to Antioch, then to Rome; from there with two Presbyters, to preach the faith of Christ, was sent to Limoges, and there at last, in the fortieth year of the Lord's resurrection, departed life; which is the present opinion of the people. The other asserts that he was sent in the reign of Decius around the year of Christ 250: and this is the opinion of the Learned, who profess that the former is victorious in dignity and weight, but conquered in number i.e. fewer hold it.

[2] Which of these opinions is more consonant with truth, that we may be able to discern, individually they must be examined. the common one rests on the Letters and Life: And to begin from the common one; two Letters published in the name of Martialis, to the people of Bordeaux and of Toulouse; and his own Life, which is said to have been written by Aurelian his successor, demonstrate to us the more certain origin of this opinion. Therefore the whole basis of this, depending on their truth, must be examined more accurately. First, whether those Letters were truly written by Martialis; then whether that Life which we now have, of the same man, is the very same which is said to have been composed by Aurelian; we must investigate. For if it be most certainly established about them, that Martialis, according to the reckoning of the common opinion, was sent into Gaul by Peter; there will be no longer room for doubt. But if, on the contrary, it becomes clear that the names of the Authors have been falsely supposed for them; the foundation being demolished on which they rest, they too must necessarily fall.

[3] As to the Letters: first occurs that which is read written at the end of them in an old manuscript of the church of St. Martialis: these, first found around the year 1060, "These two Letters, while the persecution of Domitian raged everywhere against the whole Church of God, were hidden in the sacristy of Bl. Peter, namely in the Basilica of the aforesaid Apostle, in the tomb of a certain one, in which also the burial of Pontiffs was anciently wont to be held; where hitherto (as we find written in the title) they lay hidden; but in our time, in the reign of King Philip, they were found: which, consumed by excessive age, written with signs and letters almost unknown to us (as had been the custom of the ancients), could yet scarcely be read, our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, to whom is owed praise, all honor, and victory, forever and ever. Amen." Which words convict them of falsity, and demonstrate them to have been truly apocryphal (which indeed for so many centuries were hidden). For why, from the time at which they were written, to these later centuries in which they were seen, did no one mention them? Or by what means, buried deep in the earth, did they escape, through a thousand years, unrotted and unharmed? from the very manner of their discovery they are shown to be fictitious. Moreover, if they were written to the people of Bordeaux and Toulouse; it must be believed that they were not so neglected by them but that some fragment, or some memory of them, survived among them. Was their fate so wretched, that, while with the persecutions of the Gentiles and the depredations of the barbarians so many writings survived, neither a trace nor a memory of them reached us? We miss the writings of many; but we know that we miss them, since from those writers who testify in their writings that they once read them, we learn that they existed. But of these Letters, Jerome, Gennadius, Isidore, Honorius of Autun, Abbot Trithemius, Henry of Ghent, and the other collectors of ecclesiastical writers, among so many monuments of antiquity, most diligently sought out, nowhere made mention. But he who tried to win for these Letters the trust of posterity, in the manner of statuaries and sculptors, who dig statues and coins deeper, so that with the rust of antiquity at last they may confer the appearance of antiquity upon them, wished them to be hidden; with unlucky outcome, however; since the most sagacious explorers of writings as well as of coins have most easily detected the invention.

[4] Of these critics I shall bring forward the judgment of Cardinal Bellarmine, and for many other reasons they are rejected by Bellarmine. to be preferred to all others in learning and dignity. His words in the book On Ecclesiastical Writers are these: "St. Martialis, the first Bishop of Limoges, is said to have written two Letters, one to the people of Bordeaux, the other to the people of Toulouse, which are extant in the Library of the Holy Fathers. But there are many things which seem to indicate that those Letters are supposititious. First, the Author of these Letters says that he lived with Christ before He was crucified. But Martialis, the first Bishop of the Limousins, was sent to that city, in the consulship of Decius Augustus and Gratus, in the year of the Lord 254 *, as Gregory of Tours testifies, book 1 of his history, chapter 10. Wherefore it is necessary either that Martialis lived almost three hundred years, or that the title of the Letters is false, which presents as author Martialis, Bishop of Limoges; or that the Letters are forged. Then in the second Letter, chapter 8, the author writes that King Stephen was baptized by him, and a certain other tyrant with his Satraps. But in the time of the Apostles, and even in the time of the Emperor Decius, Gaul had no Kings; but was subject to the Roman Empire, etc. Third, the same Author says in the same place, that the temples of the idols were overthrown, and churches built by Royal authority in his own time; which seem manifestly false: they certainly conflict with the histories of Gregory of Tours, of Ado, and of others. Fourth, in the same Letter, chapter 9, the words of the scripture of Genesis are cited, according to St. Jerome's version, which is also seen everywhere in both Letters. That indeed is a most open sign of novelty. Fifth, in the same Letter, chapter 23, the Author writes that he was present with the other disciples, when Judas betrayed the Lord with a kiss. But this seems to be repugnant to the Gospel, since Mark chapter 14, and Luke chapter 22, say that Christ celebrated the Last Supper with the twelve, and entered the garden with the eleven, and then went to meet Judas. Sixth, in the same Letter chapter 8, he says that a certain Valeria, in Gaul itself, was crowned with martyrdom. That indeed is repugnant to Sulpicius, book 2 of his Sacred History, and to Gregory of Tours, book 1, chapter 28, of the History of the Franks, who write that in the times of M. Antoninus the first martyrdoms within Gaul were seen. Thus far the correct judgment of Cardinal Bellarmine concerning the Letters of Martialis.

[5] But as regards the Life of the same Martialis, as also the Life, by Hessels. namely that which, from manuscript Codices, the Carmelite Beauxamis first attached to the Apostolic lives which are circulated under the name of Abdias the Babylonian; that is to be esteemed no more than those Apostolic lives, which, in the judgment of the same Cardinal, are more similar to fables than to true narration: both on account of the errors of history, and on account of the stains upon the faith with which it is sprinkled. Justly therefore and deservedly John Hessels, the Louvain Theologian, praised by the same Cardinal, marked it with this censure: The Life of St. Martialis which begins "While the Lord Jesus Christ was preaching in Judea, in the tribe of Benjamin there came together to him": does not please on account of very many things. Among other erroneous matters, Martialis and Cleophas are said, with many other disciples of the Lord and the Apostles, to have ministered at the supper an abundance of food and drink, and water and linen cloths for washing and wiping the disciples' feet, whereas Christ is said to have been girded with one cloth: and the Apostles supposed that Judas was sent by the Lord to give something to the needy, or to buy necessaries for the feast-day; as teeming with absurdities, which does not indicate that there was a multitude ministering there. Again Martialis is said to have received from the Lord, after the resurrection, equal power both of binding and loosing with the Apostles, and so to have been sent to preach in the whole world: which, if it were true, never would Matthias have succeeded into the place of Judas, but Martialis would have been chosen. And Martialis is called the Co-apostle and Fellow-disciple of Peter, which seems not to be tolerable: although he might be called an Apostle, just as Epaphroditus and Andronicus are called by Paul Apostles, of some particular nation. Again an Angel is brought in to say about Martialis, that twelve Angels, deputed to him, do not permit him to be wearied or to hunger, thirst, or suffer pain. Likewise, that, just as he is a stranger to carnal concupiscence, so he will also become a stranger to the pain of death. All which things are ridiculous: for the servant is not greater than the Lord. Likewise, he himself is said to have adorned the church with much gold and lamps, and to have appointed those who should perform the divine Office (whom now we call Canons), and to have ordained that all the neighboring peoples should visit that temple four times a year, etc. Thus far the censure of that learned Theologian, which shows that the writer of the Life of Martialis, mingling so many ridiculous things contrary to Sacred Scripture, was both an unskilled Theologian and a careless Historian.

[6] Whoever he was, he angled for antiquity and credit by these words with which he made an end, and falsely presenting the name of Aurelian, as if Aurelian, Martialis's disciple and successor, had himself written: "But I Aurelian, although I did not know all things which, before I deserved to be regenerated by the wave of holy baptism, I fully learned; nevertheless after I was, by him, freed from the prisons of hell, restored to the life above:

whatever I could learn by report to hear, and by sight to see, I have by no means cared to keep silent." How true these things are, the following words indicate, which are read in an old manuscript collection of the miracles of the Translation of St. Martialis in the archive of the church of that same Saint.

"For from ancient times, on every side a savage barbarian storm rushed through Aquitaine, namely of the Scythian nations, among whom Vandals, Slavs, also Goths, stained with the Arian perfidy; the Northern peoples too, drunk with the error of paganism, raging beyond measure, the Norse, the Danes, with the Irescali Northmen, were miserably ravaging all things. For which reason it had been necessary that the more precious treasure of the churches be most studiously and secretly hidden. For the barbarians not only carried off captives with their moneys, but indeed the glorious bodies of the Saints, if any such Life ever existed, it has utterly perished, unworthily transferred from our borders to theirs for sale, which happened with very many; but also ecclesiastical utensils, and the manifold divine books, were driven out from the homeland. The earth alone, not allowing itself to be carried off, lacked proud buildings, as being dissolved by the ash of fire. It is reported, moreover, that the book, in which the deeds of the highest Patron had been arranged one by one, was carried off by that very nation. For if the volume of the Apostle's Life shows us no small prolixity, much more does that from which this, as they say, is said to have been culled, flow forth more copiously: and because, as excerpted, it had become known in very many places, it was not abolished for us; but arranged singly through many, as being singular it left and deserted the solitary survivors. But that excerpted book, throughout almost the whole world of Europe, among authentic men well known and approved, has the same authority in the Catholic Church as the Canonical books of the old and new instrument Testament have." From which words it is inferred that the Life of Martialis, which is said to have been written by Aurelian, no longer exists: and these words from the Life of Alpinianus, companion of Martialis, confirm this: "The Deeds also of the holy Apostle Martialis, whereas that which is now had is contracted from another which Aurelian pursued with very long narrations, his verbosity being passed over, we have briefly collected, as the things cited above, plucking only the necessary, and the verbose and superfluous, though true, omitting on account of weariness." Whence it is clear that one and the same was the writer of the Life of Martialis and of Alpinianus; not Aurelian, but some other, who proclaims himself a compendious excerptor of Aurelian.

[7] which itself cannot have been written by Aurelian, Therefore this one thing only must be weighed, whether this Life which is now read was excerpted from that first and ancient one of Aurelian. For if it were a compendium of that one, lost by the Barbarians, we shall judge it to obtain equal fidelity with the ancient one: but in order that the narration may exhale the true antiquity which it wishes to profess, it ought not to contain names of nations, men, or places unknown to the time described, nor to narrate other things altogether contrary to the most certain fidelity of historians of that same age. In these things, however, the author of the Life sinned grossly, especially in these words: "Stephen entering, the betrothed and Duke of the aforesaid virgin (namely Valeria), holding the Principality from the river Rhone all the way to the Ocean sea, having power to rule the people of the Gascons and the Goths, up to the Pyrenees mountains." And a little after: "But this Duke had, as we have already said, the Principality from the river Rhone all the way to the Ocean sea, possessing the whole region of the Loire, and all Aquitaine, or the peoples of the Gascons and Goths. Yet he was not called King, although he was a most powerful King of the Gauls: because no other then properly imposed this name upon himself in the West, except only Nero, who held at Rome the Principate of the Empire." For who is ignorant that the dignity of Duke, the dominion of the Gascons and Goths, finally became known only when the Roman Empire was declining, after Theodosius the Great? In the reign of Nero, who does not know that all the Gauls were administered by his Proconsuls, Governors, and Legates, under his name? And although those things would suffice to reject that writing, the Author nevertheless (as if he were wholly bent on detracting credit from his own writing) sprinkles it with proper names, which no one will believe were in use at that time. Such is the name of the Gentile woman Susanna; known to the Babylonians or Jews; likewise the names Arnulf, Hildebert, Sigebert, at last heard among the Burgundians and Franks in Gaul.

[8] Nevertheless, whatever the writer raves, his Life obtained such great credit among posterity, as narrating altogether unsupported things. that thence, beyond the memory of men, a tradition arose; against which whoever disputes, seems to most people to be attacking faith itself. But far be it that our faith should rest on so weak a foundation, which is established only by written and unwritten law (νόμῳ ἐγγραφῷ καὶ ἀγραφῷ). But in order that this tradition, proceeding from excessive credulity, may be examined; it must be laid down that, for a most certain tradition to be held, it must arise at the very time to which the matter itself is referred, and come down by an unbroken series to later times. Has, then, this common tradition, from the time of Martialis, in that order come down to us? First, in that Life, Martialis is said to have been one of the seventy-two Disciples of Christ: yet none of the ancients who collected the names of the Disciples, mentioned him: not Eusebius, not Jerome, not Severus Sulpicius, Dorotheus, or Ado; from which it is established that in their century that tradition about Martialis was unknown. Second, the same Life says that Martialis was sent by Peter, and died in Gaul in the reign of Vespasian. But Gregory of Tours proves, from the Acts of Saturninus, that he came into Gaul together with Saturninus of Toulouse, and therefore in the reign of Decius. Wherefore neither in the six-hundredth year, in which Gregory lived, was that Life known, which Gregory, whether to attack or to approve, would have reported. Nor does it lessen Gregory's credit, what Baronius says, that Gregory could here, as elsewhere, have been deceived: for in this matter, he who errs in one thing is not made guilty of all; otherwise the authority of Gregory would be unstable throughout all his history. Moreover Gregory, illustrious by Senatorial lineage, among the Arverni, neighbors of the Limousins, could not be ignorant of the dignity and age of Martialis, whom he praises in many places. But this tradition was not yet born even in the nine-hundredth year. For Lethald the monk, writer of the Life of St. Julian of Le Mans, asserts that Martialis came into Gaul under Decius with other Bishops. Third, the same Life testifies that in the 14th year of Nero the Emperor Martialis built a Basilica: which he will not easily believe, who is not ignorant that only under Constantine the faculty of building larger churches was given to the Christians. For before, the faithful gathered within cemeteries and crypts, until under Constantine the Basilica of St. Savior was built at Rome, which by Nicholas I, in a Letter reported in the 7th action of the 8th Council, is said to have been the first constructed in the whole world.

OBSERVATION OF D. P.

There is not lacking what the learned Reader may oppose to these last censures. For first, That Martialis is not named among the 72 disciples is to be made little of, the names of the 72 Disciples no writer worthy of credit collected or handed down; but they are either supposititiously held by authors not their own, or transcribed from those who believed titles not true; and universally it appears that the same names were collected from the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of Paul, of whom they were Disciples, not of Christ, unless perhaps hidden, so among them some Martialis could long have lain hidden, if such a one were proved from elsewhere to have been among them. As to the place of Gregory of Tours, not even Bosquet himself would wish to defer all those named there from the Acts of St. Saturninus up to the year 250. But we can hardly believe that the opinion which Cordes and Bosquet attack, was not even born in the year of Christ 900; both because we think Florus, so much older, saw Acts, nor is it established that the Acts first appeared in the 10th century. in which Martialis was said to have been sent by Peter; and because Ademar, Monk of St. Eparchius of Angoulême, writing around the end of the 12th century, in the Commemoration of the Abbots of St. Martialis toward the end, confidently calls his Deeds canonical, always received by the Church, which sufficiently declare the privilege of his Apostleship, and that without doubt he is one of the 72 Apostles, whom the Lord sent like lambs among wolves, which 72 not only the Greeks, but also Luke the Evangelist, and Paul the Apostle in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, call Apostles. Taught by experience, however, how not three hundred whole years are needed for some opinion pleasing to the common people to be believed most certain and most ancient; knowing also that something could have been added to Florus by transcribers, which is not his; I am content to leave in the middle the Question about the time when the Acts were first written, or rather feigned; and only not to receive them as authentic; and that the more justly, the more unjustly the Author assumed for himself the name of Aurelian, the disciple and successor. Let it also suffice to have repudiated the supposititious Letters of St. Martialis, Meanwhile both they and the Letters are rightly rejected. of which also Gaufrid of Vosie thus makes mention, ch. 10: In the time of Peter, Abbot of Vosie, two Letters of St. Martialis are read to have been found in the sacristy of St. Peter, in the tomb of a certain one, where the burial of Bishops anciently was. But the testimony added to them declares the unskillfulness of its Author; when, to the age of Domitian, in which everywhere throughout the Empire Roman letters were employed, even now most well known, he ascribes the custom of using signs and letters almost unknown in the 11th century, which could scarcely be read. Likewise, since in the same age of Domitian, in which it was unlawful for the dead to be buried within the walls, in some urban oratory, such as that would have been where afterward was built the Basilica of St. Peter, the first Cathedral of the Limousins, there were tombs of the dead, in one of which the Letters then hidden were said to have been found, in the reign of Philip.

* read 250

§. II. On the time when the common Life was written; and on the manner in which the title of Apostle was confirmed to St. Martialis.

[9] It has been proved, as I think, that this common Life of Martialis was by no means written by Aurelian, nor is the tradition ancient: now let us search out that time The first who mentions the Life is around the year 1020, when this opinion first began. I find no one, before the writer of the miracles of the second Translation, to have mentioned this Life. But he wrote a little after the year twentieth above the thousandth i.e. about 1020. For relating those things which had happened around the thousandth and tenth year, he writes thus: "After a great generation of mortals had run its course, there is celebrated by the Aquitanians a second, modern Elevation of the highest man: whose sublimity I would dare confidently to commemorate, in that it is clear that I employ the cloud of no fiction. For almost every kind of men still survives hitherto, who testifies with their own eyes to those things which I wish to insert in writing." And a little after: "But lest anyone think me fabulous, by questioning men more worthy than I, who today survive in countless numbers, he will prove that these things are in every way true." From which it is most manifestly gathered that the Author described those matters a little after they had been done. In the second place, I read Martialis an Apostle in a Frankish Synod, held in the presence of King Robert,

by Gauslen, Archbishop of Bourges, Hugh, Abbot of St. Martialis, and certain other Bishops of France in the year 1022. In that Synod the Aquitanians rebuked the Franks, because they numbered Martialis among the Apostles, with these words: "You Franks do not act rightly, because you proclaim Martialis with the Apostles. We act rightly, because we recite him among the Confessors. You call him the last of the Apostles: we call him the first of the Confessors in the Litanies." Which quarrel Gauslen quelled, asserting Martialis to be of the Apostles, but not proving it, and concluding the disputation with these words: "We Franks keep ratified the custom, in this matter, which our Fathers, who first by their authority shaped the monastery of St. Benedict to its rule, handed down to us, supported by full reason."

[10] Which words indeed show the authors of this tradition of the Apostleship on the credit of the Monks of St. Martialis, to be the Monks of St. Benedict; who, in that century the masters of letters and libraries, by the authority by which they prevailed among the people, easily persuaded that one of their opinion. Just as Hilduin, Abbot of St. Denis under Louis the Pious, around the year of Christ 830, deluded by the craft of the Greeks who courted his favor, first of all asserted that Denis of Paris was the Areopagite, the disciple of Paul. Although up to that time the Ecclesiastical writers, Gregory of Tours, Fortunatus of Poitiers, in the year of Christ 600; Bede, in the year 700; Usuard in the year 800, name Denis only as Bishop of Paris, no mention being made of the Areopagite dignity. Indeed Gregory too numbers him among those seven Bishops, whom he reports to have been sent under Decius around the year 250, among whom also our Martialis is enrolled. Moreover all the ancient Martyrologies, namely that very one which was in use in the time of Pope Gregory I, published by Heribert Rosweyde, and those of Bede, Usuard, Ado, and Notker the Monk of St. Gall, honor the memory of St. Denis the Areopagite, Bishop of Athens, who, led by the same zeal for antiquity as in the case of St. Denis, by the testimony of Aristides, a contemporary writer, suffered under Hadrian, on the third day of October: but the passion of Denis of Paris, with Rusticus and Eleutherius, they commemorate on the ninth day of the same month. All these things being set aside, Hilduin attached the Areopagite dignity to Denis; nor yet did he merit entire credit among posterity, since Lethald and Abelard, although the latter a Monk of St. Denis, attacked his opinion. Therefore by the example of Hilduin, when the Church of St. Martialis of Limoges, around the year 848, and wishing to number St. Martialis among the Apostles, had come into the power of the Monks of St. Benedict, those Monks rendered Martialis more illustrious with feigned antiquity. For Hugh, Abbot of St. Martialis, returned from that Synod to the monastery, was the first of all to write Martialis among the Apostles in the Litanies.

[11] Jordan, Bishop of Limoges, protesting in vain, Moved by this matter, Jordan, Bishop of Limoges, began to charge the Abbot with novelty, and to assert that Martialis should be numbered with the Confessors, not the Apostles, according to the old custom; as is clear from the letter, written in the name of King Robert, William Duke of Aquitaine, and the Bishops, to Pope Benedict VIII, who died in the year 1024, from which we transcribe these words of Jordan: "Saint Aurelian, his successor (whom Saint Martialis himself drew from hell), Ebulus, Atticus, Ermogenianus, and his other successors up to thirty- six, and I indeed the thirty-seventh, who am called Jordan, the lowest of all; all these held him for a most holy Confessor; likewise all the Abbots dwelling in his monastery, up to the present day. This Abbot who now is, deceived by novelty, lifted up with pride, came to me, who am viler than my predecessors, beseeching that in my Council and in Synod, I should place the most holy Confessor in the number of the Apostles, which I would not do. He, persisting in his words, pledged the faith which he had with twelve Monks of that Monastery, to defend it with authority in every Council before me; but he could not do this in the Council of William, Duke of the Aquitanians, with the Archbishop of Bourges hearing, Isembert of Poitiers, and the rest of the Co-suffragans. All the Bishops of the Franks, and appealing to the judgment of Benedict VIII. of the Arverni, of the Gascons, of the Aquitanians, with whom I have spoken, prove and affirm that the most holy Confessor Martialis ought not to be removed from that place where the holy Fathers and our predecessors placed him; and that there is no Apostleship unless proved by authority." And a little after: But to you I, Jordan, send these letters on the part of those aforesaid persons, namely King Robert, William Duke of the Aquitanians, all the Archbishops, namely the Catholic ones, who contradict me, lest I place St. Martialis in the number of the Apostles. But you, if you have dared to do this, which your holy predecessors did not do, Gregory, Clement, Boniface, and many others, to place Confessors among the Apostles; if it is a sin, let it be yours; but I am free from blame, and there is neither iniquity nor sin of mine; I will show you the will of all the Aquitanians: because that seducer Abbot does this for no other cause, except that he wishes to destroy the Episcopal See of the first Martyr, and to annihilate the Apostleship of St. Peter. By the bearer of this letter send me letters, and in all things make known to me your will.

[12] Benedict could not reply, being prevented by death; for John XIX assented to them by a decree issued in the year 1031. but of his successor John XIX, in an old manuscript of Limoges, this Letter is read, "John the Bishop, servant of the servants of God, to Jordan the Bishop and his Clergy, and to all the Bishops of Gaul, dearest greeting with Apostolic benediction." etc. In which, having described those things which are read in the common Life of Martialis, by this reasoning he defines Martialis to be an Apostle: "Since therefore the name of Apostle is not of number, but of office, whoever, by God's revelation, is sent to preach, and by his pious exhortation and example frees the people divinely committed to him from the power of the devil, can not unfittingly be called an Apostle; because Apostle means One Sent." Which definition indeed in that controversy of the Bishop and the Abbot was rightly handed down: for they agreed in the mission of Martialis, and asserted him by common consent to be of the seventy-two Disciples, and disputed only about the name of Apostle. Having received John's letter, the Bishops gather at Bourges, and made a decree of this kind: "In the name of the Lord, I, Aymo the Archbishop, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1031, in the 14th Indiction, in the Council of Bourges, which was held on the Kalends of November, with the consent of the Co-bishops or Abbots, and of the rest of the faithful, who there were present, decreed, and by my own authority confirmed, that the privilege of the Lord John, Pope of the Roman See, by which the same Lord instituted, and sent to the Bishops, Abbots, and rest of the faithful of all Gaul, should remain unshaken and inviolate; namely, that the most blessed Martialis in the number of the Apostles, both in the Litanies and in all the divine Offices, should be reckoned, and should be, and not undeservedly." And Aymo gives this reason for the decree: which is taken up in the Synod of Bourges; "It is indeed worthy (as we find inserted in his Deeds) namely that he both at the Supper of the Lord and at the passion, and also at the resurrection, the ascension too, was present, and with the rest of the Apostles received the Holy Spirit:" and he cites no other authority, except that Life of Martialis.

[13] But in order that that Decree might be put into execution, the Bishops come to Limoges on the eighteenth day of the same month of November, and conclude the Council begun at Bourges. In this, Jordan, Bishop of Limoges, brings forward into the midst the question of the Apostleship of Martialis to be examined. Then a certain Priest and Canon of Le Puy, Engelricus, and in the second, at Limoges, it is confirmed; but on a hypothesis, cites Jerome, on the Epistle to the Galatians, whence it is concluded that there were others besides the twelve Apostles; namely those who, when they had seen Christ in the flesh, afterward preached him. Yet he infers another thing with these words: "If those who, seeing the Lord in the flesh, afterward preaching him, are Apostles; how much more Martialis, who was the Lord's Disciple in the flesh?" Which scarcely coheres with the foregoing; and, if he had not wished to beg the question, he ought first to have proved the hypothesis: but those by no means bad men did not examine particulars so accurately. After Engelricus, Azenerius the Abbot, brought up among the Grammarians and afterward in the Palace, said that he had nowhere heard Martialis known under any other name than that of Apostle, in the monasteries of his Order which were in France: and at last, when in Berry, by the precept of King Robert, he had been set over a certain monastery, he abrogated its contrary custom, and wrote Martialis among the Apostles. Whence it is clear that this tradition was not yet established at that time, not even then approved by all, concerning the age of the Saint; nor had the Life of Martialis obtained such great authority. Which also seems able to be gathered from the words of the corroboration, made in the Council of Bourges concerning the Apostleship of Martialis, which are: "They therefore charged all, that, the blindness of ignorance being cast off, they should believe him in their heart, and confess him with their mouth an Apostle; because it was depravity and negligence in those who were before us, that they did not at all reveal the glory of God, which is in him for his Apostleship." Wherefore the tradition for the Apostleship of St. Martialis was not yet constant. And this is openly confirmed from a manuscript Homily, delivered at the same time, at the dedication of the Chapel of St. Peter beside St. Martialis. "But why," he says, "have I said this, except because I have perceived whisperers, acting against the statutes of the Fathers, who, rightly lying upon their own heads, insofar as it is in them, chatter through hiding-places that Martialis is not one of those who preached the Lord, the Apostles; but one of the last Confessor Bishops, who existed long after the times of the Apostles.

[14] and the ancient Litanies being wrongly adduced, And although Odolric, Abbot of St. Martialis, the successor of the aforesaid Hugh, asserted in this Council that St. Martialis had been numbered among the Apostles by all the ancient Fathers: yet he produces none from whom he might prove that tradition; pretexting this slight excuse for his silence, lest, on account of the governance of the church of Martialis, he should seem to say those things out of a zeal for flattery. Nevertheless he also cites old codices of the Litanies, in which St. Martialis was written among the Apostles. As if indeed there were anciently in the Litanies that distinction, and the names of the Saints were not recited indiscriminately: for in the very ancient Missal of the year thousandth of the church of Limoges, and in the fourfold Litanies which are recited on the Paschal days, Confessors, Martyrs, and Apostles are mingled, no order being kept. In the first three of them, there is no mention of Martialis; in the fourth he is recited after Paul, and Peter and Sylvester precede him; whence it appears that that ancient series of the Litanies was different from the present method. Wherefore the testimonies drawn from those books are not to be greatly esteemed. Odolric adds that Abbo, Abbot of St. Benedict on the Loire, also approved that opinion concerning Martialis: but the most recent age of this man, who had died a little before, lessens the authority. By these reasons especially the Apostleship was decreed to St. Martialis in that Council. But by what authors? upright indeed and holy, but unskilled. For they assert that Sixtus the second, the Pope, Lawrence, Denis the Areopagite, Clement, and Saturninus lived at the same time; and yet Saturninus too,

in the reign of the Emperors Diocletian and Maximian; in the consulship of Decius and Gratus, bore his martyrdom, and with many other things being unskillfully confused, by their own witnesses there. Which is indeed ridiculous. For that Consulship falls not in the reign of Diocletian and Maximian, but in that of Decius, as may be seen from the Fasti. Moreover, whoever in that Council wished to scrutinize the Apostleship of Martialis, were noted as unlearned and rebuffed; but its assertors, however much they confused history, were praised as more learned. No mention either was made of Gregory of Tours, discoursing of Martialis under the Emperor Decius; which one silence alone would suffice to retract the cause. Nevertheless that new tradition obtained such great weight from this Council, having just a little before been promulgated by the edition of the common Life of St. Martialis; that thereafter the greater part of men believed Martialis to have been one of the 72 Disciples, sent by Peter into Aquitaine to preach the Gospel. And Cardinal Baronius himself approved that opinion, when it had been confirmed by a Provincial Council; although for other reasons he held the Life of St. Martialis deservedly suspect, and sprinkled with many stains of history and of sound doctrine, in the first volume of his Annals.

[15] whence no credit accrues to the Life produced a little before. From all these things which have been said for the sake of examining the first opinion, we can gather these. I. That the Life of Martialis which we now have, is not that which Aurelian is said to have written; nor excerpted from it. II. That it savors of no antiquity. III. That it is full of errors, both in history and in faith and dogma. IV. That no author worthy of credit, before the nine-hundredth year of Christ, mentioned it: whence it seems to follow that it was written from that time. V. That it does not appear that any foundation of this tradition and opinion existed, before the year nine-hundredth. VI. That only from the year 1031 and the Council of Limoges was St. Martialis recited among the Apostles in the divine Offices, having before been written in the number of the Confessor Bishops, which can be confirmed by the ancient Missals and Breviaries of the Church of Limoges, written before the Council.

OBSERVATION OF D. P.

The Decretal Letter of Pope John XIX, in full, the Reader will find on p. 35 of the Gallia Christiana, of John XIX, decretal, published (as I said) by Claude Robert, Provost of the Church of Lyon, after the Statute of Aymo of Bourges. Would that those read and weigh it, who place such great force in the letters of the Roman Pontiffs, insofar as they are narrative, and taken from the tenors of the petitioners; that, if they find there a tittle even slightly favoring opinions prejudged with themselves, they raise their crests, and those who oppose them, as contemners of Pontifical authority, they cut to pieces. Behold here, not one word or another, to which perhaps even another, insofar as it briefly reports the Acts of St. Martialis, and not inconvenient, sense could be given; but an entire and prolix narration, drawn from the most unskillfully patched-together Life of St. Martialis, and that not very ancient; behold a sentence, to all indeed to be revered, because proceeding from the Apostolic See, and true in sound sense; yet resting on a hypothesis, not only not effectively proved, but not even then called into examination, and now everywhere exploded. Is there anyone hitherto, who has thought either Cordes or Bosquet, or any other, to be blamed, even among those who think that, independently of the Life, the Discipleship of Martialis among the 70 can be maintained, or at least his mission by St. Peter? it is lawfully not admitted. Let those rigid censors also weigh here the force of conclusions founded on a negative argument; and how reasonably here Cordes (whom Claude Robert, p. 34, calls most skilled in ecclesiastical matters and in all antiquity) by denying that anyone is produced, who mentioned that Life before the year 900, proceeds to establish its novelty; meanwhile excusing the more pious than learned Fathers of the Synod of Limoges, who neither doubted of the credit of that Life, nor, doubting, endured to listen to doubts. But let it not be objected to Cordes, that he alleges the Martyrology published by Rosweyde, and another, long since printed under the name of Bede, at no. 10, as most ancient; which are now evidently proved to be recent enough: for the later age always teaches something new, the Greeks deceived Hilduin concerning Denis, which the former did not know. Nor let it seem harsh, that he says Abbot Hilduin, in ascribing Denis to the Areopagites, was deluded by the craft of the Greeks, who courted his favor: for we have shown that the same happened in the year 1049 in the Council of Mainz, concerning St. Servatius, in the Disquisition on the Bishopric of Tongeren before Vol. 7 of May, no. 11. Yet otherwise must one judge of St. Simeon, whose Life we gave on June 1, and of his companion Cosmas, coming from Mount Sinai; who around the year 1020, waiting at Angoulême (as is said in ch. 2 of the Life, yet St. Simeon did not [flatter the Franks concerning Martialis,] note 3) and there being asked, whether the Easterners knew Martialis; with one voice replied, saying: Surely we know Martialis, one of the Seventy-two. Far be it that we should say such men spoke thus through flattery or ambition. What therefore they had not learned from their ritual books, or the Catalogues of the 70 Disciples, known in the East (for there is no Martialis there) they had drawn from that more ancient Life, which we judged to have become known to Florus of Lyon, conveyed by newcomers from Europe into the East; following the Life in good faith. meanwhile thereby we are made more certain of the antiquity of that opinion, greater than seems to Cordes; and the scruple is lessened, which could render it doubtful to us, whether truly the words recited above were Florus's, as found among his additions to Bede.

§. III. The more probable opinion for the year 250 is expounded and declared.

[16] The former opinion having been examined, let us inquire into the reasoning of the second; which, namely, reports that St. Martialis came into Aquitaine in the last year of the reign of the Philips, the first of Decius, in the consulship of himself Decius and Annius Gratus, Fabian being Bishop of Rome, in the year from the nativity of Christ 250: and this will be the more probable, the more that former one strays from the truth. This rests on the Acts of St. Saturninus, The first origin of this opinion is drawn from the Acts of the passion of Saturninus, Martyr and first Bishop of Toulouse, as it is reported by Gregory of Tours, writing around the year of Christ 600, ch. 30 of book 1 of the History of the Franks, in these words: "In his (namely Decius's) time, seven men were ordained Bishops, and sent to preach in Gaul, as the History of the passion of St. Saturninus relates. For it says: Under Decius and Gratus, Consuls, as is held by faithful recollection, first and chief the city of Toulouse had begun to have St. Saturninus as its Priest. These therefore were sent: to the people of Tours Gatianus the Bishop, to Narbonne Paul the Bishop, to Toulouse Saturninus the Bishop, to the people of Paris Denis the Bishop, to the Arverni Stremonius the Bishop, to Limoges Martialis appointed Bishop." Which narration, excerpted from the public Acts, in which the companions of Saturninus were described, and by the authorities of Severus Sulpicius, convinces that Martialis, one of them, only at that time, not before, was sent: which seems sufficiently confirmed by the authority of Severus Sulpicius, who in the second book of his Sacred History says: "After Hadrian, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, there was peace for the Churches. Then under Aurelius, the son of Antoninus, the fifth persecution was set in motion: and then first within Gaul martyrdoms were seen, the Religion of God being received later beyond the Alps." Which words indicate two things. First, that those who suffered under Aurelius at Lyon were the first Martyrs of Gaul; wherefore the earlier martyrdoms commonly reported of Denis, Valeria, Savinianus, and others must be rejected. Second, that a little before the reign of the Antonines the religion of Christ was received in Gaul, first at Lyon and Vienne, Roman colonies, situated nearest to Italy, in which that new Religion had its first Martyrs.

[17] and these by no means slight; And the reason adduced by Severus, that martyrdoms were at last seen in the fourth persecution in Gaul, namely on account of Religion, received later, has great weight in this dispute. Nor do Irenaeus, Tertullian, and other ancient writers oppose it; who, while they assert that the Christian Religion was promulgated throughout Gaul, are to be referred not to earlier, but to their own times, namely later than the age of the Emperor Severus, noted by Sulpicius. Nor ought we to suppose that the Religion of those times was received widely in all Gaul; but only in some provinces and cities; since even in the time of Martin of Tours, in the year 400, by the same testimony of Sulpicius in his Life, the gods of the Gentiles were still worshipped in Gaul. For indeed the faith of Christ, first received at Lyon and Vienne, was gradually spread into the neighboring provinces. And, when, with the Emperors by turns benevolent toward the Christians, the free faculty of preaching the faith was given; the Bishops, especially of the city of Rome, sent Christian men into these places, for the sake of cultivating religion: and therefore in the reign of the Philips, favoring the Christians, Fabian the Roman Bishop sent the seven men named above as Bishops into Gaul. Therefore from what has been said it is established, [and from the silence of the more ancient writers concerning a greater antiquity of Martialis.] that in the sixth century, when Gregory of Tours was writing, Martialis was not recognized as a disciple of Peter and his legate. For Gregory himself, in several places of his book on the glory of the Confessors, speaking of Martialis and others, always keeps silent about Peter. So in ch. 27: "Therefore St. Martialis the Bishop, sent by the Roman Bishops, in the city of Limoges began to preach." And below: "For through holy Stremonius, who he too by the Roman Bishops, with the most blessed Gatianus and the rest whom we have mentioned, was directed, first the city of the Arverni received the word of salvation." Nor is any other read to have mentioned this new opinion concerning Martialis, who precedes Gregory, or follows even two hundred years after him. And to confirm this later age of Martialis, the Life of Ausonius, Bishop of Angoulême, suffices, which narrates that he, a disciple of Martialis, was slain for religion by Crocus, who was depopulating Gaul in the reign of Valerian and Gallienus. Wherefore Martialis cannot precede his disciple Ausonius, who suffered after the year 260, by two hundred years; which nevertheless the assertors of this new opinion are compelled to assert, referring the mission of Martialis to the Apostle Peter.

[18] At last, these two opinions being compared, it is not difficult to perceive the antiquity of ours, by an argument of the greatest moment in such matters. and the novelty of the common one. For this latter, confirmed by no most certain author, and supported by no reasons, is deservedly to be rejected; by this most certain rule of history, brought forward by Baronius in the first volume of his Annals: "For what is brought forward by a more recent author, concerning matters so ancient, without the authority of some older one, is despised." But that the weakness of this common opinion may appear more, it must be investigated whence that prevailed, that Martialis was sent by Peter: which indeed was done by a form of speaking. For since the Roman Church was always called the See of Peter; The contrary error flowed from this those who were sent as legates from that See, were said to have been sent by Peter, although they came from Peter's successors long afterward. Which, manifest in several places of the writers, is confirmed by the dignity of Boniface, sent by Gregory II into Germany for the sake of the Gospel; who, "the Missus of holy

Peter," he is said to be in the letter of Charles Martel, that all who are sent from Rome are said to be sent by St. Peter, and in ch. 2 of book 5 of the Capitularies. Wherefore there must be corrected very many authors who wrote around the year thousandth, and from it; for, scarcely grasping this form of speaking, they referred to Peter what ought to have been ascribed to his successors. In this matter Flodoard, slipping, when he writes that Sixtus, the first Bishop of Rheims, was sent by Peter, must be corrected from Hincmar; who, earlier than Flodoard by a hundred and fifty years, asserts that Sixtus of Rheims was sent by Sixtus of Rome, ch. 16 of the work against Hincmar of Laon.

[19] These are the things which by zeal for truth I have investigated, and written, by no means led by a mind to derogate from the dignity of Martialis or of any other Saint (for neither can time add or take anything from the grace conferred upon them by God; nor is their sanctity less, [and this was fostered by the study of the highest antiquity, most common among the people.] because they lived later) but in order that I might succor the gullibility of certain persons, who, with fabulous narrations, under the pretext of piety and religion, leaning with their whole mind, sprinkle our sacred history with the foulest stains. Which, however, ought not to seem strange, if we recall the natural desire of all peoples, to report their own origin, whether true or feigned. For most nations, since they read nothing more ancient than the fall of Troy, proclaimed that they drew their origin from the fugitives and survivors of the Trojan fire; so too in the cause of religion each people gladly traces its own from the very mouth of Christ, or of the Apostles. And thence so many traditions have arisen, which from the opinion of the common people passed into the very Sanctuary, and into Ecclesiastical tradition, which it would be easier to note than to root out. This one thing we can do, namely, to point them out; God, when it shall please Him, will teach the truth.

OBSERVATION OF D. P.

We profess the same as he, in this work; nor do we take it ill, if, [How those are to be borne who take it grievously to be untaught what has become engrained.] while we point out errors and convince their foundations of manifest falsity, or even of inexcusable imposture, we are not always received with fair ears; affection standing in the way, innate everywhere in each people and assembly, of defending those traditions which they believe to have flowed from their first founders, although often born within a few centuries. But if those even slip into reproaches and curses of those who advise better, and so make their own cause worse, from bad, before moderate readers; we rather have compassion on them, than are indignant; and by whatever reason we can, we excuse their intention, when we cannot excuse the matter itself. But neither are we so bound to any opinion, however much approved by us, that we do not give place to those maintaining the contrary, especially to those who decline from one extreme of excessive credulity in such a way that they do not fall into the other of excessive severity. And such a one is deservedly reckoned by all the learned, whose Letter here, as I promised, I subjoin, written to Henri de Valois, who was preparing a new edition of Eusebius; where its Author, advising a few things about the Martyrs of Lyon, proceeds thus to a subject akin to them.

LETTER

of Peter de Marca, Archbishop of Toulouse

Martialis, Bishop and Apostle of Limoges in Gaul (St.)

BY DE MARCA, [edited] BY D. P.

§. I. On the time when the faith was first preached in Gaul.

Love of country and of defending the truth has pricked and driven me, that with you (Henri de Valois) I should briefly complain, of the injury done to Gaul, not by foreigners indeed, but by our own countrymen; who, allured by the desire of more recondite learning, removed from the common people, in which they excel, that St. Luke preached in Gaul, thought that the truth, which is in the open, must be sought by them, as if lying hidden in a well. For they detract from Gaul the care of preaching the Gospel, which they know was bestowed by the Apostles themselves upon the Ethiopians and Indians: as if the most flourishing and chief of the Gentiles, Rome, which Peter and Paul consecrated with their blood, [and] the neighboring nations, had been postponed to those most remote regions, situated outside the Roman Empire. Other was the mind of the Apostles, who undertook to instruct Gaul in the faith, immediately after their arrival in Italy. For blessed Luke, departing from the company of Paul, betook himself by his master's command into Gaul; where he devoted special zeal to preaching the faith. Then through Italy and Dalmatia, displaying his industry in the same work, he withdrew into Macedonia, to perform the same office. Epiphanius asserts; We have a wealthy author of this narration, Epiphanius, who in heresy 51, what we have said, testifies concerning Luke, one of the 70 disciples, to whom he says the task of preaching the Gospel was entrusted: "He preaches first in Dalmatia, and in Gaul, and in Italy, and Macedonia. But the beginning was in Gaul." (Κηρύττει πρῶτον ἐν Δαλματίᾳ, καὶ ἐν Γαλλίᾳ, καὶ ἐν Ἰταλίᾳ, καὶ Μακεδονίᾳ. Ἡ ἀρχὴ δὲ ἐν τῇ Γαλλίᾳ.) And this he himself first performed in Dalmatia, Gaul, and Italy, and Macedonia; but in Gaul before the rest: or if you prefer; "but the beginning was in Gaul." That he made the beginning of his preaching in Gaul, or bestowed the greater care upon it, he most plainly testifies. For with a double signification these words can be expounded, "but the beginning was in Gaul" (ἀρχὴ δὲ ἐν τῇ Γαλλίᾳ). But that he is said to have preached first in Dalmatia, is not to be referred to Dalmatia alone, but also to Gaul, and Italy; account being taken of Macedonia, in instructing which he labored last. Which word perhaps must be restored in the context, so that it answers to the word "first." And so that "first" will not prevent Epiphanius from signifying, in the last words, that Luke placed the beginning of his work in Gaul.

[2] Learned men object, that they do not know that what Epiphanius wrote was handed down by any of the ancient authors. perhaps from Hegesippus, To be sure. But not therefore are the things less true which he reports as done. He sought his narration from a more ancient writer, whom, as very many others, we lack. Perhaps from Hegesippus he had drawn it, who exercised himself in expounding the origins of the Churches. The whole work of Hegesippus was extant, not only in the times of Eusebius, but also of Jerome, and so of Epiphanius. It survived also in the age of George Syncellus, who produces which Eusebius recites. More grievously do I grieve over the gloss of that most learned man, once most friendly both to you and me (Dionysius Petavius); who in his Animadversions on that place of Epiphanius, tries to take from us the force of that testimony: for he notes that Epiphanius speaks of Cisalpine Gaul. Forsooth, in that author do we understand Cisalpine Gaul, which was then none, from the very times of Augustus, where someone wrongly wishes Cisalpine Gaul to be understood: who instituted a new division of the provinces of the Empire. He removed from Italy the name of the Gauls, which he bounded by the barrier of the Alps; dividing solid Italy into 11 regions; the Gauls being cut into four provinces, Narbonensis, Lugdunensis, Belgica, and Aquitanica; as Strabo, Mela, and Pliny teach. Which arrangement Ptolemy also followed in his Tables; as also Ammianus and the rest, whom occasion compelled to discourse of the Gauls and Italy. And so there is no other Gaul in Epiphanius than that which, after Christ was born, is called by all authors Gaul, according to the limits instituted by Augustus.

[3] But the Apostles employed not only Luke, to instruct Gaul in religion; but also Crescens. Of which matter the witness is Paul himself (2 Timothy ch. 4), who teaches that Crescens was sent into Gaul. It is certain indeed that the reading of this Pauline passage was varied, even among the ancients. For Chrysostom and Theodoret among the Greeks, the Vulgate interpreter and Ambrosiaster among the Latins, read Galatia, and not Gaul. But of the more ancient and truer reading we have Epiphanius as champion, who constantly writes, in heresy 51, that those err who in this passage of Paul read Galatia, when he teaches that Gaul must be written: the same man says this concerning Crescens "for not in Galatia, as some erring suppose, but in Gaul" (οὐ γὰρ ἐν τῇ Γαλατίᾳ, ὥς τινες πλανηθέντες νομίζουσιν, ἀλλὰ ἐν Γαλλίᾳ). In the same way your Eusebius, more ancient than the rest, reads in the codex of Paul, Gaul, just as Epiphanius; if rightly his words be weighed, and the true reading in that author be retained from Rufinus, and all the manuscript codices, as you expressly noted. Theodoret indeed, who retains the word Galatia in the context of Paul, although he could have taken it of Asiatic Galatia, preferred to refer it to our Gaul, that is, to Western Galatia. So certain was, among all the ancients, the preaching of Crescens in Gaul: in which they agree with the old Martyrologies of Usuard and Ado; who, after the faith was promulgated by Crescens in Gaul, mention his return into Asiatic Galatia. For indeed what forbids that to Luke and Crescens, the constant companions of Paul, we should add Paul himself the Apostle; who, by the testimony of the Greeks, Athanasius, Epiphanius, Chrysostom, and Theodoret, and of the Latins Jerome, after his first arrival in the City, where he spent the two years mentioned by Luke, why should not Paul also be added to these (in which interval of time perhaps Luke began the preaching of the Gospel in Gaul) went to Spain, to promulgate in those regions the Christian faith. But to one going to Spain, he had to proceed by that public road most celebrated among the ancients, which from Italy through Gaul leads into Baetica itself. Its description is exhibited not only by Antoninus's Itinerary, from Nice through Arles, Narbonne, the summit of the Pyrenees, Junquera, Barcelona, and the rest of the places; but also Strabo, who diligently occupied himself in the explication of that road; which, in most chapters less understood by the interpreters, we have tried to make clear in the first book of Catalonia illustrated, whose edition we are hastening. Not idle was Paul in instructing Gaul, who, the salvation of the Gentiles being specially committed to him, with so ardent zeal procured it everywhere through the regions he traversed; of which matter we shall presently treat more fully.

[4] and the Apostle Philip? We can also claim the labor of the Apostle Philip for Gaul, and for Britain itself, from Isidore of Seville, book on the life and death of the Saints, ch. 74: Philip preaches Christ to the Gauls, and the barbarian nations, and those neighboring to darkness, and joined to the swelling Ocean, he leads to the light of knowledge and the harbor of faith. And he adds, that Philip, having performed this office, migrated into Phrygia, where he died at Hierapolis. But since some try to withdraw this Apostle from the Gauls also, by the testimony of St. Isidore, both Baronius, and others under his lead, transferring that narration to the Asiatic Galatians; it will not be irksome to transcribe here the words of that most learned man, although of the herd of the Innovators, Ussher of Armagh, from ch. 2 of the Antiquities of the British Churches. But what Freculf has concerning the Apostleship of Philip in Gaul, cited by William of Malmesbury, he expressed word for word from Isidore's book on the Fathers of both Testaments, ch. 74. For in both we read, that Philip preached Christ to the Gauls, and led the barbarian nations, and those neighboring to darkness and joined to the swelling Ocean, to the light of knowledge and the harbor of faith. (which Baronius gratuitously understands of Galatia) Nor does Baronius's conjecture here please me, transferring these things of Isidore from our Gauls to the Asiatic Galatians; and much less the rashness of the recent editor of Isidore's works, James du Breul, putting Galatians for Gauls in the very text (without any

mention of the old reading). For besides that Isidore, in this very work ch. 82, and in the Toletan Office (which is commonly called Gothic and Mozarabic), and likewise Julian, Archbishop of Toledo, writing on the Prophet Nahum; and Bede (or whoever was the author of the Collectanea and the Florus) assign Gaul to Philip; it is read that he preached Christ to the Gauls also in the little book on the feasts of the Apostles, which is contained in the manuscript Hieronymian Martyrology, from which Isidore transcribed nearly everything into his book on the Fathers of the New Testament: and that mention of the barbarian nations joined to the Ocean, sufficiently proves that European Gauls, not Gallo-Greeks, were understood by Isidore.

[5] To these I thought should be added the testimony of a most ancient manuscript codex from the Library of St. Germain of Paris, which also assigns James to the Spaniards. in which that treatise of Isidore, written eight hundred years ago, together with other books of the same author, is contained; where the ancient reading most plainly presents, that Philip preached to the Gauls, just as in ch. 82 it is had, that Gaul was assigned to him. Nor is it to be concealed, that in the same codex it is read, that Spain was given to the Apostle James, and that he preached the faith to the Spaniards. Which authority of the ancient codex ought to remove the suspicion conceived by certain persons of a reading perhaps corrupted in that place, in the earlier editions, by some zealot of the Spanish party. It is indeed disputed among the learned about the coming of James into Spain, chiefly on this head, that the Apostles had not yet departed from Judea, the lots for preaching among the Gentiles having been distributed to them. But just as by the authority of Isidore, who could draw his own from earlier writers, the Spaniards can defend themselves against the novelty of the feigned opinion, which is wont to be opposed to them; so it is lawful for us to discourse of Philip; yet the more securely, in that his preaching among the Gauls, since it falls after the allotment of the provinces made by the Apostles, is free from that weapon by which the preaching of James among the Spaniards is wont to be assailed.

[6] Moreover, this was the purpose of the Apostles, that, wherever the world extends, the Apostles certainly who went to the Britons they should diffuse the Gospel, by the command of Christ. Wherefore, as Eusebius best noted, book 3 of the Demonstration of the Gospel, ch. 5, not only Rome, the head of the Empire, and the Roman provinces, but also other kingdoms, both of the Parthians, and of the Armenians, Scythians, Indians, Ethiopians, they themselves instructed by their preachings: so that, as Eusebius subjoins, to the British islands themselves, having sailed beyond the Ocean, they brought the light of the faith. Indeed I think no one so foolish, how could they have neglected the Gauls, through whom is the way thither? who would persuade himself that the Apostles, solicitous about the Britons divided off by the whole world, were more negligent in Gaul, through which is the way to Britain, in imbuing it with the truth, by themselves or by legates. Which they excellently accomplished through Philip, one of their college, Luke, Crescens, Trophimus, Paul, Martialis, and others noted in the Ecclesiastical records; and Clement completed it through Denis, Saturninus, Eutropius of Saintes, Ursinus of Bourges, and others. Nor indeed was unfruitful the seed of the Christian faith which Philip, Luke, Crescens, and the rest had scattered in Gaul; the clemency of God, who cherished the other regions of the world, not deserting Gaul. Irenaeus will speak for us, since he says the faith was brought to the Celts, writing in the year 190. who wrote about the year 190 (in book 1, ch. 3), saying that the true faith is proved from the profession of the same doctrine, which in the various Churches established throughout the whole world is constantly handed down, both in the East, in Egypt and Libya; and in Germany, among the Spaniards and Gauls, and elsewhere. For although, he says, in the world the languages are dissimilar, yet the power of the tradition is one and the same. And neither do these Churches which in Germany are founded believe otherwise, or teach otherwise; nor these which are among the Iberians, nor these which are among the Celts, equally as among the Iberians and Germans: nor these which are in the East, nor these which are in Egypt, nor these which are in Libya, nor these which are established in the middle of the world. But just as the sun, the creature of God, in the whole world is one and the same; so also the light and the preaching of the truth shines everywhere, and illuminates all men who wish to come to the knowledge of the truth.

[7] In that age, our opponents will indeed liberally concede to the Germans and Spaniards their Churches without any restriction, but will fight over the Celts against Irenaeus; who, since he spoke generally of the Celts, will invidiously confine his statement to a special tract, neighboring to Lyon? Far be that envy from the breasts of the Gauls; and let them not lay violent hands upon the honor of the nation, and let Tertullian, in the year 220, speak without exception which foreigners spare; and they vaunt themselves much on this account, that they do equally with us in the beginnings of the received faith. Indeed in what state was, in the age of Irenaeus, the Christian faith among the Gauls, he will easily conjecture, who shall weigh Tertullian, discoursing thirty years later, about the Gospel received throughout all the tracts of the East; to which are soon subjoined by the author, the varieties of the Gaetulians, and the many borders of the Moors, all the limits of the Spains, and the diverse nations of the Gauls, and the places of the Britons inaccessible to the Romans, but subject to Christ; and of the Sarmatians, and Dacians, and Germans, and Scythians, concerning the diverse nations of Gaul. and of many hidden peoples, and provinces and many islands unknown to us, and which we cannot enumerate. By "the diverse nations of the Gauls," Tertullian understands the four provinces of the Gauls from the division of Augustus, Narbonensis, Lugdunensis, Belgica, and Aquitanica: of which the body of the Gauls was then composed, which afterward was distributed into seventeen provinces.

OBSERVATION OF D. P.

He does not deny such a beginning of the preaching, To the doctrine hitherto handed down, Bosquet and Cordes would not, I believe, have greatly demurred, if it had been so proposed to them; nor would they have denied that the conversion of the Gauls was begun by Paul and his disciple Crescens, of whom I treated on the 27th of this month, or even by Luke and Philip; although perhaps they would deny that it was done with such success, that Bishoprics were instituted according to the number of provinces or even of the larger cities; and that, of those who perhaps were instituted in greater number, many did not quickly fail; whence it came about, that except for a few, and those disputed, Bishops of the first century and the second, none are named. But since the same must be admitted of Britain, Spain, Germany; the comparison instituted with those nations does not seem to press more strongly; and Irenaeus and Tertullian can be said, but Bosquet teaches that it advanced slowly, to mean nothing more than that everywhere among the nations enumerated by them some seeds of the Gospel were cast, which then, when they themselves were writing, were still in the blade, among the persecutions somehow germinating. Thus Bosquet, in his preliminary Chronology, at the year 95 writes, of Clement of Rome, that it is no uncertain tradition that he sent disciples into Gaul: that in the year 152 Bishops were sent by Sixtus of Rome into Gaul; and around these times Polycarp sent disciples into Gaul; that in the year 165 persecution flared up again in Gaul, mitigated ten years before by the Emperor's edict; in which persecution Verus of Vienne is crowned; that in the year 178 Andeolus, Benignus, Thyrsus, Andochius, Flocellus, and others fall for the name of Christ; that in the year 182, in the reign of Commodus, peace was given to the Church; which being in force, Paul of Narbonne and other Bishops could come into Gaul; by no means a rigid follower of Gregory of Tours. that when Severus died, the peace of the Church was renewed, to last for 30 years; and that through the intervals of this peace, Bishops were sent from Rome into Gaul, and the faith most widely preached; but when Decius renewed the persecution, the year, marked by his and Gratus's Consulship, was illustrious by the martyrdom of Saturninus of Toulouse, and in the same Decian persecution Denis of Paris, and several others suffered in Gaul. So Bosquet there; certainly not so scrupulously adhering to the Epoch handed down from the Life of St. Saturninus, that he would maintain the seven men named by Gregory to have been first sent in that very Consulship, or even all together; but he acknowledges, that to that Consulship, received from tradition, in which the martyrdom of Saturninus alone had been recorded by our forebears, the mission of that man was wrongly affixed; and not only of him, but also of others, who, equally as he, were believed to be the first, each in his own city, to have held a Bishopric, although introduced and deceased at different times, one at one time, another at another. But let us hear further the Archbishop of Toulouse, striving to raise these same men to the first century of Christ.

§. II. The Epochs of the first Bishops in Gaul are weighed, and established in favor of antiquity.

[8] That the seven named by Gregory of Tours first came around the year 250 Since the beginning of the preached faith in Gaul rests on most ancient and most firm testimonies, from the delegation of the Apostles, and on its being received by the Celts (as Irenaeus speaks) or by the diverse nations of the Gauls (as Tertullian says), I most grievously bear the bitterness of certain persons against their own country, who thrust the origins of all the Gallican Churches, except that of Lyon and a few others, down to the middle of the third century; affixing, from Gregory of Tours, a little before the Consulship of Decius and Gratus, that is, a little before the year 250, the beginning of the seven companion Bishops, Gatianus of Tours, Trophimus of Arles, Paul of Narbonne, Martialis of Limoges, Denis of Paris, Saturninus of Toulouse, and Stremonius of the Arverni, who first into those parts of the Gauls brought the light of the Gospel, and in the Churches established by themselves made it firm. the Author about to deny it, That those first leaders were the chief of the Christian expedition in the provinces of Narbonensis and Aquitanica, and in the more remote parts of the province of Lyon, is doubted by no one; with the monuments of the ecclesiastical records agreeing, and the solemn Sacred Rites which are performed in their memory by an annual rite, to the divine Godhead, in each Church. But why the ancient tradition of these, supported by the Martyrologies of Bede, Usuard, and Ado, and by the old Acts, in the consignation of time, ought to be derogated, I plainly do not see; especially since by other arguments also this truth rests.

[9] Let the beginning of the discussion be taken from Trophimus, and let the words of the little book be weighed, he proves that Trophimus was sent by Peter to Arles, offered by the Bishops of the province of Vienne to Pope Leo in the year 450. "It is known to all the Gallican regions," they say, "nor is it unknown to the most holy Roman Church, that the first city within Gaul, Arles, deserved to have as its Priest St. Trophimus, sent by the most blessed Apostle Peter, and that thence gradually to the other regions of the Gauls the good of faith and religion was infused." This Trophimus, whom Gregory placed under Decius, the assembly of the provincial Bishops, to whom the census of their Churches was clearly known, from the sense of the Bishops of the year 450, and who preceded Gregory by about a hundred and fifty years, teach that Trophimus was sent by Peter, and narrate it as a matter most clearly known to all; and they subjoin, that thence to the other regions of the Gauls gradually the good of faith and religion was infused. This same thing Pope Zosimus signifies in letter V: and by the rescript of Pope Zosimus to them, "To which (the city of Arles) first

from this See, Trophimus the highest Bishop, from whose fount all the Gauls received the rivulets of faith, was directed." Furthermore this letter of Zosimus, published by the most illustrious Sirmond, and praised of old, both in the Council of Frankfurt, and also by Usuard and Ado, since it was written in the year 417, ought to be of more weight than the testimony of Gregory of Tours, in fixing the epoch of Trophimus, which the Synod of provincial Bishops most plainly refers to Peter the Apostle; from whom Zosimus does not depart, since he teaches that Trophimus was first established as Bishop in Gaul. and by Leo's decree in favor of that See. Pope Leo took account of the petition sent to him by the Bishops, by a rescript which he immediately gave to them, by which he settles the old contention of the Church of Arles and of Vienne, concerning the Metropolitan dignity, by a division of the province of Vienne.

[10] Namely by the privilege of "protoklesia" (first calling), It is necessary to sketch briefly the state of that controversy; so that the scruples which have arisen, from it not being rightly understood, in the minds of the learned, as regards the antiquity of Trophimus, may be more easily removed. The city of Vienne was the metropolis of the province of Vienne in the register of the Empire: whence, according to the Nicene Canons, that the metropolitan right pertained to itself in the ecclesiastical order, had once contended Simplicius, the Bishop of that city, against Arles, in the Council of Turin, in the year 397. In which suit the Fathers interposed the ruling, against the metropolitan right of Vienne established in the Nicene decree, that that city ought to enjoy the honor of Primacy, which should show itself to be the Metropolis of the province; meanwhile counsel being given to the Bishops to foster concord, that each should recall to his own care the cities nearer to himself. The dignity of the Church of Arles had been ruined by this interlocutory ruling, which in the order of the civil arrangement undoubtedly depended on the metropolitan city of Vienne. Wherefore Zosimus, twenty years after the Synod of Turin, appealed to by the Bishop of Arles, condemns the impudence of Simplicius of Vienne in letter VII, because in that Council he had demanded, Patroclus of Arles relying that the judgment of creating Priests in the province of Vienne should be permitted to himself; which he says is against the statutes of the Fathers, and the reverence of St. Trophimus: and he decrees, according to the prayers of Patroclus of Arles, that the Bishop of that city should possess the series of ordination, strengthened by the times from Trophimus onward, not only in the province of Vienne, but also in both Narbonensian provinces. Of which prerogative he also gives the reason in letter Patroclus had obtained the prerogative from Zosimus VIII to Hilary of Narbonne: "Since Trophimus, the Priest, once transmitted to the city of Arles by the Apostolic See, to those regions (namely both Narbonensian and Viennese) first exhibited the reverence of so great a name, and not undeservedly transfused into others that authority which he had received." Therefore the whole cause of the metropolitan Primacy, "in the protoklesia" (ἐν τῇ προτοκλησίᾳ), or in the prior calling to the faith, and in the older institution of the Bishopric, made at Arles by Trophimus, Zosimus expressly establishes.

[11] Moreover, since these rescripts of Zosimus, resting indeed on an old custom, as he himself says, from the report of Patroclus; yet were tearing apart the discipline of the universal Church, decreed by the Nicene Synod, Boniface had disapproved the use of this in the Narbonensian Province: which had committed individual provinces to their Metropolitans, but not several provinces to one. Hence it came about, that Pope Boniface did not indeed reproach Patroclus of Arles with the usurpation of metropolitan power, but rather, leaving it entire to him in the province of Vienne; yet condemned his temerity, by a letter given to Hilary of Narbonne in the year 422; namely, because in the Church of Lodève he had celebrated the ordination of a Bishop, "In another province," he says; namely in Narbonensis, which was distinct from Vienne. And that deed he maintains to be against the constitution of the Nicene Synod, which he describes: and he admonishes Hilary, that, fortified with metropolitan right, and relying on his own precepts, he should perform what is to be done in the Church of Lodève. Hilary of Arles refusing. Hilary of Arles, Patroclus's successor, supported both by Zosimus's prior rescript and by old custom, was unwilling to obey Boniface's decree, restricting within the province of Vienne the power of the Bishop of Arles.

[12] For this reason, and on account of the case of Chelidonius, and other most grave reasons, whence Leo, the successor of Boniface, being offended, Pope Leo, angry with Hilary, because he seemed to honor less the majesty of the Roman See, bitterly inveighs against him in a letter to the Bishops of the province of Vienne, written in the year 445: and among other things he objects to him, that to Bishop Projectus, infirm and unaware, he had set over another Bishop, and that in another province, shows that the indulgence of Zosimus was personal, namely outside Vienne. "What does Hilary seek for himself in another province?" says Leo, "and that which none of his predecessors before Patroclus had, why does he usurp? since even that very thing which seemed to have been granted to Patroclus by the Apostolic See temporarily, was afterward changed by a better sentence." By which words Leo most openly signifies the prior rescripts of Zosimus, and the later decree of Boniface, by which the power of the Bishop of Arles was confined within the limits of the province of Vienne, as I noted above. But what exceptions were objected against Zosimus's rescript, in that head which regards the ordinations in both Narbonensian provinces, indeed he brands it as obtained by stealth granted to Patroclus, the same he manifestly teaches, if his words be weighed according to the rules of law. Namely, that it was obtained from Zosimus by surprise through the false suggestion of Patroclus, who referred to an old custom, the power of ordaining in the province of Narbonensis, which he himself was first usurping. Then he signifies that, at most, that prerogative, granted by Zosimus to Patroclus for a time, ought to be understood. Finally he uses the later decree of Boniface, which, according to the prescript of the Canons, had rescinded that ambitious and fraudulently elicited rescript of Zosimus, granting two provinces to one Metropolitan.

[13] At last, kindled against the obstinate contumacy of Hilary of Arles, Pope Leo, and finally takes away the Primacy from him: without cognizance of the cause, those whom it concerned being unheard, took away from the Bishop of Arles all metropolitan right, even in the province of Vienne, and adjudged it to Vienne, as if it pertained to him by the right of the civil Metropolis according to the Canons; just as Simplicius in the Council of Turin had once tried to obtain from the Fathers. This injury done to the Church of Arles, against the authority of the most ancient custom, founded "in the protoklesia" (ἐν τῇ προτοκλησίᾳ), and derived from Trophimus, the Bishops of the province of Vienne, struck by this novelty, took care to remove; an occasion being seized from the death of Hilary, and the election made by themselves of Ravennius, from Trophimus; who, sent by Bl. Peter, first in Gaul instituted the Bishopric at Arles; of which primal institution the claim ought to be held of more weight, than that of the civil arrangement, which had once attributed to Vienne the right of the political Metropolis. Which weapon, fetched from the civil order, that the Bishops might repel, they do not hesitate to propose to Leo also the civil dignity, by which in those times the city of Arles flourished: at the prayers of the Bishops of the Province of Arles. namely, that in it stood the Seat of the Prefecture of the Gauls, translated thither from the city of Trier; and so that that city was the mother of all the Gauls. Which saying, that it might be opposed to Vienne, which bore itself only as mother of the province of Vienne, they add also, that whoever within Gaul, namely ever since Constantine the Great and Valentinian, wished to display the insignia of dignity, in this city received and gave the Consulship: that is, celebrated the Consulship with Circus games; just as that most learned man Hadrian de Valois, your brother in the brotherhood of letters and of blood, excellently interprets this place, O my dearest Henri de Valois, in book 8 of the affairs of the Franks, which by most learned cares and the skill of his genius he illustrated.

[14] thus Leo restores it, now persuaded of its true right, At last, the documents of the reasons being weighed, which were contained in the petition of the Provincial Bishops, the allegations of the Bishop of Vienne being also heard; Pope Leo judged that account should be taken of the privilege of Arles, and that the metropolitan dignity should be restored to that Church; which, by the fault of its Bishop Hilary, could not be deprived of its ancient right forever. And so the whole matter, according to the counsel of the Council of Turin, given once to the contending Bishops of the two cities, he so tempered, so that he orders Vienne to retain its part of it. that the greater part of the province of Vienne he restored to the Church of Arles; only four cities being left in the power of the Bishop of Vienne; lest he should seem, through inconstancy or injury, to take away the metropolitan honor which he himself had granted; and, as he himself says, lest Vienne, to which he had assigned the metropolitan power taken from Hilary, should seem to be made inferior to itself. But both about this controversy, and also about the civil dignity of the cities of Vienne and Arles, we shall give an accurate disquisition in the second edition of our book on the Primates, which we are preparing.

[15] Add that at Arles, before the year 256, Bishop Marcianus was sitting Moreover this antiquity of Trophimus is confirmed by the letter of Cyprian to Pope Stephen, by which he asks that letters be written by him into the Province (that is, all of Narbonensis, which by the old name of "the Province" he calls) by which, Marcianus the Bishop of Arles being removed, another in his place might be substituted; since, the warnings of his colleagues being despised, he stubbornly adhered to the errors of Novatian. But it is necessary that this letter of Cyprian was written at the beginning of the See of Stephen, when between those two Pontiffs no dissension had yet intervened. But since that beginning of Stephen falls in the year 256, it follows that the beginnings of Marcianus precede the Consulship of Decius. Whence most rightly it is gathered, by the testimony of St. Cyprian, that the mission of Trophimus must be moved into earlier times, though Gregory of Tours be unwilling, namely to the age of Peter, according to the testification of the petition of the Bishops of the province of Vienne. By the mere suspicion of falsity, devised of one's own accord, both against Cyprian's letter, and against Zosimus's rescripts, and the Bishops' petition, I would not wish the partisans of Gregory to free themselves from those manifest proofs. For once this manner of answering and prescribing be admitted, against writings which are fortified by style and by the fidelity of ancient codices and editions, and by the testimony of ancient authors; there falls all the delight of wits in discoursing about literary questions. Meanwhile it must not be passed over, that the letter is vindicated to Cyprian by the most illustrious Rigault, in his Notes on Cyprian, the arguments of falsity brought forward by a most learned man being discussed. Labor also not undiligent has the learned man Hugo Menard bestowed, in refuting the arguments brought against Cyprian's letter, and Zosimus's rescripts, and the petition.

[16] Which testimonies, although they suffice to vindicate the truth, and before him Trophimus, from the Martyrology of Ado, it will not be foreign, to confirm the series of the ancient tradition, to cite Ado of Vienne as a witness, whose these are the words in his Martyrology, on the 4th before the Kalends of January: At Arles, the birthday of holy Trophimus, Bishop and Confessor, disciple of the Apostles Peter and Paul. The same more fully in his little book on the festivities of the Apostles: The birthday of holy Trophimus, of whom the Apostle writes to Timothy, "But Trophimus I left sick at Miletus." He, ordained Bishop by the Apostles at Rome, was first directed to the city of Arles in Gaul to preach the Gospel of Christ: from whose fount, as the blessed Pope Zosimus writes, all the Gauls received the rivers of faith; who at the same city in peace reposed.

[17] The error of Gregory of Tours, in consigning

the epoch of Trophimus, at Narbonne Paul, from the Old [Martyrology of Rosweyde,] being expunged; we shall use a more obtainable witness, in proving the refutation of a like hallucination of the same author. Gregory casts down Paul of Narbonne to the times of Decius. To whom we shall oppose the most wealthy testimony of the most ancient Martyrology published by Rosweyde, which the Roman Church used among its solemn rites, by the testimony of Gregory the Great, book 7, Letter 29. The words of that Martyrology are these, at the 11th before the Kalends of April: At Narbonne, of holy Paul the Bishop, disciple of the Apostles. Behold Paul the Bishop of Narbonne, disciple of the Apostles, that is, by the Apostles themselves taught the Christian faith. Let me lose my case, unless the signification of that word, which I have proposed, be constant in the same Martyrology; which certainly cannot be other, according to the proper sense of the word. I will report the places from which this signification of the word is established: It is proved that he was a disciple of the Apostles. On the day before the Nones of January, at Crete, of Titus, disciple of the Apostles. On the 3rd before the Kalends of May, at Paphos, of Tychicus, disciple of the Apostles. On the 7th before the Kalends of June, at Athens, of Quadratus, disciple of the Apostles. On the day before the Nones of August, of Aristarchus, disciple of the Apostles. On the 4th before the Kalends of December, of Sosthenes, disciple of the Apostles. On the 6th before the Kalends of January, of Trophimus the Bishop, disciple of the Apostles. Wherefore plain is, as I said, the testification of the old Roman Martyrology, for fixing the Bishopric of Paul of Narbonne in the very times of the Apostles, although later than the Bishopric of Trophimus. That most celebrated indeed among the ancients was the name of this Paul, Prudentius teaches in his poem on the Martyrs of Saragossa: Barcelona, propped up by illustrious Cucufas, shall rise, and Narbonne beautiful with Paul.

[18] But the true consignation of the time, from the most ancient testimony of the Roman Church praised above, we ought to draw. Ado and Usuard follow But the series of the tradition is to be sought, both from Usuard, and from the Acts of the life of Paul of Narbonne, and also from Ado's Martyrology, and from his little book on the festivities of the Apostles, whose these are the words at the day 11th before the Kalends of April: The birthday of holy Paul, whom the blessed Apostles, ordained Bishop, sent to the city of Narbonne: whom they relate to have been that very same Sergius Paulus the Proconsul, a prudent man, from whom Paul himself received his name, because he had subdued him to the faith of Christ; and who, by the same holy Apostle, when he was proceeding to Spain for the sake of preaching, was left at the aforesaid city of Narbonne, the office of preaching being not sluggishly fulfilled, illustrious with miracles, crowned, is buried. Here two things are to be observed. And first indeed, that Paul was set as Bishop over the Church of Narbonne from the very times of the Apostles, the authority is absolute, since he was their disciple, as I said. The other regards the old report, which mingles that Paul with Paul the Proconsul, and makes him the same. Moreover it teaches that he was instituted in possession of the Bishopric by Paul the Apostle, setting out for Spain. Which indeed Ado prudently did not assert as certain; but as received from an older report: whose narration's authors, Braulio, Leander, Julian, and other ancient Spanish writers, are produced in the letters of Pope Stephen, published by the most illustrious and most learned men William de Catel, Senator of Toulouse, and Philippe Labbe, Priest of the Society of Jesus; of which of Tarragona, and whose fidelity and meaning we have weighed in the second edition of our book on the Primates.

[19] As regards Martialis; this one thing is held in the old Martyrologies, that he was Bishop of Limoges. For Martialis stands the Synod of Limoges. Yet the ancient Acts of his life teach that he was one of the 70 disciples of the Lord, and sent by the Apostle Peter to the Aquitanians; which tradition the Synod of Limoges embraced in the year 1034, in the disputation which was held concerning the Apostleship of Martialis in Gaul.

[20] Next succeeds, For Denis, his Life, the epoch of Denis of Paris, vexed by the disputations of most grave men; these, standing with Gregory, and thrusting that Bishop down to the times of Decius, that all hope of mingling Denis of Paris with the Areopagite might be cut off; but those, with the contrary purpose, referring his mission to Clement of Rome. Indeed that Denis was sent into Gaul by Clement, Bede and Usuard teach in their Martyrologies: which tradition they drew, it is certain, from the ancient Acts of the Life of St. Denis, which long ago from manuscript codices the most illustrious and most learned Francis Bosquet published, now the most worthy Bishop of the Church of Montpellier. written by Fortunatus. The name of the author of that Life I discovered in the manuscript codex of the Church of Tours, which comprises the Lives of several Saints described by Fortunatus, and among the rest, that of Denis of Paris, which now, as I said, has been published. We have therefore Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, contemporary of Gregory of Tours, who draws back the epoch of Denis of Paris to the times of Clement. Which opinion the Bishops of Gaul followed in a letter to Pope Eugenius, written in the year 824, which is had in Baronius: from whom, supported by so wealthy a witness as Fortunatus, to depart, I think to be a sacrilege. Concerning Saturninus, Gratian, and Stremonius I shall presently treat, since their case is special.

OBSERVATION OF D. P.

Prudently in this Paragraph the Author, in the front of his literary battle-line, places those arguments by which, having attacked the weaker part of the opinion he is to oppose, he may seem to have won the whole cause first, Concerning Crescens, the disciple of Paul, there is scarcely any doubt. before he had joined battle with the stronger. And so, beginning from St. Crescens (concerning whom Gregory of Tours had pronounced nothing, and whom we believe to be more probably held a disciple of the Apostle Paul, with Bosquet scarcely contradicting at all, and that only doubtingly, as we saw on the 27th of June) he bends with all his efforts the arguments for St. Trophimus, indeed such, much less concerning Trophimus sent by St. Peter, that the opinion can by no means be charged with novelty, which has assertors so much more ancient than Gregory himself. Nor do I know whether it deserves to be considered, what Bosquet assumes from Zosimus's Letter; as if he, when he says Trophimus was sent by the Roman See, keeping silent about Peter, ought to be reckoned to deny that he was sent by him; and that the Bishops of Gaul can be reckoned to have spoken figuratively. The first-birth certainly of the Gallican Churches they attribute to it, and they say that from it the rest flowed. Which being posited, it cannot but be older than Vienne; which yet was long established before the times of Decius, by Bosquet's own admission.

But that it may appear more clearly, to what end the most learned Prelate so laboriously here conducts the controversy, or at least to the 1st century, between the Churches of Arles and of Vienne, let it please the reader to hear Antoine Pagi, in volume 1 of his Critique, at the year 400 concluding thus: "If that tradition of St. Trophimus's delegation into Gaul, in the first century of the Church, had not been certain, especially among the Fathers of the Council of Turin, the judges of this controversy in the year 394; not only would the Bishop of Arles have suffered a rebuff, but he would also have offered himself to be laughed at by the Fathers and, some years later, by the Roman Pontiffs; because, in order to usurp the right of another, he would have affirmed that a mission, which had been made a century and a half before, and which therefore could be unknown to almost no one, had occurred from the very beginnings of the Christian Religion, in the presence of Bishops, and afterward in the presence of the Roman Pontiffs, not unaware of ecclesiastical antiquity; and especially by that title he would have dared to demand that Vienne, a Metropolis in the Register of the Empire, be subjected to himself. The matter assuredly would have been of more recent memory, than that at least the Bishop of Vienne, or all from the Council, could have been ignorant of it." Meanwhile I would not conceal that our Rosweyde was greatly deceived, but this Calendar published by Rosweyde is of no help here, when he judged a certain Calendar found by himself, before Ado's martyrology, to be the Old Roman Martyrology, praised by St. Gregory; and by that title he led both Bosquet and de Marca into error. Our Bollandus recognized it in the apparatus to January; but what it really was, Florentini more deeply scrutinized, in his Notes on another most ancient one, which, marked everywhere by us with the name of Jerome, he maintains can truly and solely be called the Old Roman; but that Calendar of Rosweyde, so far from being old, that it was not written before the year 1073, and was augmented with the names of Saints, and a few words besides, partly taken from Ado, partly borrowed from a compilation of more recent writers.

In its truly ancient three copies you will see none of those whom the Calendar praises, as being compiled after the year 1073. reported as disciples of the Apostles, except Paul alone; but under this phrase only: In the city of Narbonne the Birthday of St. Paul the Bishop, for which title the Corbie copy writes "Confessor." But the most ancient Echternach copy, and much more ancient than the aforesaid three, has none of these things: but, In the city of Narbonne, of Secundinus, Paulinus: whether Paul of Narbonne is ascribed to the Hieronymian is doubted, which indeed is more conformable to the style of that Martyrology, which reports Martyrs either alone or before Confessors, and compels us to believe that originally nothing else was written, and that the true Narbonensian Martyrs were indicated: who, since they were no longer known there, but most well known on the same day was the Bishop Paul, the Corbie Monks rewriting that very Martyrology (for their copy is next to the Echternach in antiquity, and granting this, yet not even from thence. much more recent than the Lucca copies, perhaps also the Blume one) substituted him for them, those being omitted: and so absolutely none of those who are named in the said Calendar will be found inscribed in the Old Roman, or rather Western Martyrology: and against Bosquet's arguments there will remain from the ancients only Ado, with his follower Usuard, both of slight authority for asserting such great antiquity: since Florus, midway between them and Bede, wrote of him only, In the city of Narbonne, the Birthday of St. Paul the Bishop: nor is anything had from Florus for his antiquity: whom domestic toil and tribulation so exercised, that it proved him a true servant of the Lord; which I would scarcely doubt was excerpted from some more ancient panegyrist of his, and they are conformable to the ancient Life produced by Bosquet, which makes no mention of an Apostle.

And yet that same Florus (as it seems) has something about St. Martialis. But hence nothing else follows, than that the Limousins were earlier than the Narbonensians, in raising the first Bishop of their city known to them to the age of the Apostles: who nevertheless favors St. Martialis, in which, however, they have opposing them the Life of Ausonius of Angoulême, insofar as it says this disciple of St. Martialis was killed by Crocus, King of the Alemanni; although that too asserts that Martialis was sent by St. Peter, which the author could not have written otherwise than figuratively, if he knew the ages of Peter and Crocus.

There remains the last, Denis, of whom and of his companions we read nothing else, in the most ancient copy of the aforesaid Hieronymian, than: At Paris the birthday of SS. Denis the Bishop, Rusticus the Presbyter, not even concerning Denis and Eleutherius the Deacon. The genuine Bede has no more: Florus added: Who, gloriously confessing the Trinity, gloriously deserved to be crowned with a threefold martyrdom. Who here would not judge, that he, to whom, desiring to amplify the eulogy about them to be recited in church, nothing else would have been worth noting than the number of Martyrs; if he had even from afar heard that this Denis had been the Areopagite, or at least had been sent into Gaul by St. Clement? The first the more ancient Life produced by Bosquet does not have, and

here adjudged to Fortunatus; the second it has very doubtfully: for, where some codices say; who, by the handing-down of Bl. Clement, successor of the Apostle Peter, concerning which the old Life is only ambiguous. had undertaken the seeds of the divine word to be distributed to the nations; there others, and probably more sincere, read only; who, as they say, by the successors of the Apostles, etc. which someone could understand generally of the Roman Pontiffs, conformably to the mind of Gregory of Tours; just as in the Acts of St. Firmin of Amiens, who suffered under Diocletian and Maximian, and professed himself a disciple of St. Saturninus, that same Saturninus is called Disciple of the Apostles. And so the authority of Fortunatus, older than Bede and Florus, makes nothing here; although he had written that Life, as de Marca writes that he found it under his name: which inscription, however, becomes to me the more suspect, from the silence of the aforesaid authors, diligent in collecting such things from everywhere, the more easily it could from a more celebrated place have become known to them, if it had truly existed in the nature of things, when they were collecting their Martyrologies. Prudently therefore the most recent Reformers of the Parisian Breviary omitted whatever is controverted on so great a foundation about that their Patron; and when the Abbess of Montmartre, kinswoman of the King, had interposed her authority, lest the Areopagite be altogether passed over in silence, they did not consent that he be named; yet for the Royal favor they placed a Chapter for Vespers and Lauds, "Paul standing in the midst of the Areopagus said, Men of Athens, etc." about the altar of the unknown God, as suited to him who preached to the Gentiles.

§. III. Reply is made to the objections from Severus Sulpicius and Gregory of Tours, and against the latter the conclusion is drawn.

[21] It does not escape me what has driven learned men, as it were headlong, to depress into later times the epoch of the seven Bishops; Severus, denying that martyrdoms were seen in Gaul before Aurelius Antoninus, namely the authority of Severus Sulpicius and of Gregory of Tours. The former wrote that, under Aurelius Antoninus, martyrdoms were first seen in Gaul, the religion of God beyond the Alps being received later; whence they gather that no credit is to be given to the ecclesiastical records, which relate that certain of those earlier Pontiffs suffered under Domitian, or under Trajan, or Hadrian. Would that they had preferred, by an interpretation drawn from the very principles of law and of the rhetoricians, to bring Severus into concord with the ecclesiastical diptychs. For the genus is derogated from through the species, as the Jurisconsults teach. Severus speaks of general martyrdoms; namely of the slaughter both of Pontiffs, and of the Christian people, consumed by tortures; as happened in the Churches of Vienne and Lyon under Antoninus, it must be understood of general ones, to which alone Severus had regard; to which calamity no similar one had before occurred in Gaul. Which yet does not prevent some earlier Bishops from having met death for Christ, yet without any general slaughter of the Christian people. Nor indeed does it follow that Severus erred in weaving the series of events, since by compendium he touched the chief heads of them, nor did he undertake to hand down the origins of the Gallican Churches, which he left altogether untouched, and the events of the individual Pontiffs. and a slower progress of the faith in Gaul; But what he subjoins, that the Religion was received later beyond the Alps, is true, comparison being made with the Eastern parts, and Italy itself, which was earlier imbued with the doctrine of the faith, and perhaps with a more abundant and easier outcome than in Gaul, the Gauls being more retentive of the gentile superstitions.

[22] The engine fetched from Severus being repelled, we can be free from the fear of Gregory. Gregory convicted of error from more ancient writers, He himself teaches two things in book 1 of his History, ch. 30. One, that those seven companions came into Gaul at the same time, and first established the seven Churches commemorated by him: the other, that their arrival must be referred to the times near the Consulship of Decius and Gratus, that is, to the year 250 or thereabouts. Which narration manifestly conflicts with Irenaeus, who, sixty and more years before this Consulship, mentions Churches founded among the Celts. It conflicts also with Tertullian, who, thirty and more years before the epoch of Decius, testifies that diverse nations of the Gauls profess the Christian faith: which, since it is by hearing, plainly had to be infused into those diverse nations by the ministry of preachers sent; who indeed are no others than those whom the ecclesiastical records exhibit. Gregory erred therefore, the things which he had read concerning Saturninus of Toulouse alone under the pretext of the Life of St. Saturninus, whose words he praises, in establishing the epoch of Decius; which that writer, when he affixed it to Saturninus alone, Gregory of his own extended to others, from the opinion already then received, about the company of those seven. I said he added of his own; because in the words of the Acts of Saturninus which Gregory praises, no mention is made of six Pontiffs; nor even in the body of the Acts which are extant in Surius, which are plainly the same with those Acts from which Gregory plucked the place praised by him, since with entirely the same words there that place is found described. Furthermore those Acts were composed of Toulouse, he applied to six others, whom they mention; as Hugo Menard rightly observes. Gregory is therefore destitute of his author's testimony, as regards the six Pontiffs: so that the epoch of the Consulship of Decius, to Saturninus the Bishop alone, must be referred from that writer of the Acts.

[23] But as regards Saturninus; it must not be controverted, and that not certain; that in Gregory's time a double opinion had prevailed, and that each rested on report alone. One is that which Gregory follows in this place, that Saturninus suffered in Decius's Consulship. But this the Author praised by him drew, not from the ancient Acts of Saturninus's passion, but from faithful recollection, as he says. For the ancient Acts of the passion either, through carelessness, had not been written at that time, or by the decree of the Governors had perished by fire in the times of Decius; as concerning the Acts of the Martyrs generally Prudentius testifies. The other opinion, also supported by its own report, since a double opinion concerning him then flourished, (of which Gregory himself is witness, book 1, ch. 48 of the Miracles) handed down that Saturninus was sent by the disciples of the Apostles, that is, more than a hundred and fifty years before Decius. So that, being placed in doubt, it is lawful to follow Gregory's last opinion, which coheres with that prior one, not controverted by him, about the prior Bishops not being torn apart from one another by so prolix an interval of times; who, by Peter and Paul, and thereafter by Clement the disciple of the Apostles, sent at no long interval, propagated the beginnings of the faith through Gaul. Hence it came about, that Ado in his Martyrology, one of which asserts that he was ordained by the disciples of the Apostles, writes that Saturninus suffered under Decius, according to the first opinion of Gregory; but Rabanus in his Martyrology follows the second, Gregory's words being also borrowed: "That same," he says, "Saturninus the Martyr, as is reported, ordained by the disciples of the Apostles, was directed into the city of Toulouse." Which must be understood of Clement, by whom Saturninus is said to have been sent together with Denis, in the ancient Acts of St. Denis, composed by Fortunatus of Poitiers, who most plainly confirms the second opinion of Gregory. Although the ancient Acts of St. Saturninus teach that he was sent by Peter, and that in the city of Eauze, namely the metropolis of Novempopulania; then at Pamplona, and among the other peoples of the Spains, he established Churches; as the Spanish authors also confess from their own records. But it is better that we cleave to the tradition reported by Gregory; namely, that he was ordained by the disciples of the Apostles, that is, by Clement, according to Fortunatus.

[24] The same explanation must be applied to the other place in ch. 8 of the glory of the Confessors, as also concerning Ursinus of Bourges. where he relates that to the city of Bourges Ursinus the Bishop preached the word of salvation, who had been destined into Gaul by the disciples of the Apostles, namely by Clement, as the very ancient Acts of his life testify. But the special proofs which we have applied, to support the old epoch of the five Pontiffs, Trophimus, Paul, Martialis, Denis, Saturninus, with whom the case of several others who founded Churches in Gaul is equal, the general proofs from Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Eusebius about the antiquity of the Churches, as they help, so likewise they take mutual aid from them. On which matter the most celebrated Antecessor of both Laws in the Academy of Toulouse, Antoine Dadin d'Auteserre, diligently discoursed, book 4 of the Aquitanian Affairs, ch. 9.

[25] But as regards Gatianus, Bishop of the Church of Tours; since his successor Gregory, to whom the archives of his Church were clearly known, teaches in set terms in book 9 of the History, ch. 31, [Gregory perhaps was unwilling to believe other Churches earlier than the Churches of Tours and of the Arverni:] that Gatianus was transmitted in the first year of Decius by the Pope of the Roman See, some deeds of that Bishop being also added; and no authority from elsewhere is at hand for us, by which we might recall him to more ancient times; I judge it rash to dispute against Gregory about the state of his own Church. The same I think must be said of the beginnings of Stremonius, Bishop of the Arverni; which could not lie hidden from Gregory, being of the country of the Arverni, and so no stranger among his own. Which perhaps was the occasion why he conducted himself more negligently in investigating the beginnings of the other Churches. When he saw that the beginnings of the two Churches dear to him, of Tours and of the Arverni, could not be equaled, he preferred to depress the foundations of the prior five, undiscussed, to their times.

[26] Wherefore, since among the most learned men the ancient diptychs of the Gallican Churches, meanwhile the traditions of these can be held in which the Pontiffs, the standard-bearers of the preached faith, are described, with the most ancient epoch of the Apostolic mission, have wavered, on this one head alone, in the assignment of time, because they seemed to conflict with Severus and Gregory; the most religious Bishops, our colleagues, will be able intrepidly in their Churches to assert the handed-down antiquity of their predecessors; secure about that ignorance or contempt of the ancient authors which is wont to be objected to ours, and also about some loss of historical truth: which otherwise would suffer, if their credit were taken from the ancient Acts. And so besides the others mentioned above, concerning the mission of their first Bishops, the people of Metz will claim Clement, sent by the Apostle Peter, for themselves, from the Acts, whence Paul the Deacon, a writer of the middle age, and of no contemptible authority, drew his narration. To the care of the same Apostle, and afterward of Clement, several peoples will also be able to credit, from the old Acts and Martyrologies, the first institution of their Bishops. Whose labors, if they be restored to their provinces, disposed according to Augustus's institution; how greatly true Tertullian's opinion is, about the diverse nations of the Gauls being imbued with the Christian faith, will be clear.

[27] For the province of Narbonensis was cultivated, not only by Crescens of Vienne, through all the provinces of the Gauls, but also by Trophimus of Arles, by Paul of Narbonne, who followed Trophimus most closely, and finally by Saturninus of Toulouse. Aquitanica by Martialis of Limoges; Ursinus of Bourges; Fronto of Périgueux, and Eutropius of Saintes, and also by Saturninus in Novempopulania, which was part of Aquitaine. Belgica was cared for by Eucharius of Trier, Clement of Metz, Sixtus of Rheims, and Memmius of Châlons. As regards

the province of Lyon; the faith in it was instituted by Denis of Paris, Savinianus of Sens, Nicasius of Rouen, Caraunus of Chartres, and Julian of Le Mans. It remains that we inquire about the city of Lyon: which indeed, since it owes the beginnings of its Bishopric to Pothinus, who suffered under Antoninus in the year of Christ 177, more than ninety years old, but later than the institution of Trophimus of Arles, I do not doubt that to the zeal of the latter it owes the first-fruits of the faith. For indeed, as the Bishops handed down, in the little book offered to Pope Leo in the year 450, from Trophimus as from a fount flowed the rivulets of faith into the other parts of the Gauls: which the Letter of Pope Zosimus also confirms. Wherefore, since Arles lay open to the commerce of Italy, the East, and Africa, and for that reason was joined to Lyon, the most flourishing emporium of the Gauls; it was easy for Trophimus, by himself and by other legates, to sow there the seed of the Christian faith, which at last grew into that assembly of the faithful, which deserved to be ruled by Bishop Pothinus.

[28] although certain of their Acts, faulty or fictitious, It does not escape me that into certain Acts, by which the lives of those Pontiffs are described, many things (as regards their deeds) have crept, which need a physician's hand, to be cleansed; just as concerning Acts of this kind the Council of Frankfurt had decreed once, in the year 794. That, however, does not stand in the way of the truth of the mission, about which alone there is now treatment for assertion; the rest being omitted, which are brought into question by learned men, about which perhaps elsewhere I shall open my opinion. Meanwhile I beseech our friends, that they take in good part those things which, although foreign to their opinion, I have said, provoked by the desire of defending the truth, to restore the majesty of the Gallican Church, in some way diminished, from the depressed antiquity of that origin; which in sacred matters is wont to conciliate no common veneration, both to Churches, and also to Christian Empires, in which they are established. Wherefore I have thought that our traditions, which rest on truth, must not be overthrown, but retained; deservedly may they be repudiated. especially since in the Roman Church, and in the whole Christian world they have long since been received: so that we do not need that crooked diligence which those employed, who, even by false and feigned monuments, under the name of ancient authors, strive to arrogate to themselves the antiquity of the Christian religion, or even to confirm the received antiquity.

But you, most illustrious Man, by that erudition in which you excel, not only, but also prudence, about this our endeavor, as is fitting, will judge, and will more robustly vindicate the dignity of the Gallican Churches. Farewell. At Paris, on the Nones of September, in the year 1658.

OBSERVATION OF D. P.

The explanation applied to Severus Sulpicius pleases; but not likewise the asserted hesitation of Gregory, The Life of St. Ursinus of Bourges, as if fighting with himself between two diverse opinions; since I have already shown, that Successors and Disciples of the Apostles are said indiscriminately; nor need it necessarily be understood otherwise in the same Gregory, speaking of St. Ursinus of Bourges; whose Life's Acts I marvel are praised by a learned man as very ancient; if he understands those which afterward our Philippe Labbe gave in vol. 2 of the Library, p. 455, from a manuscript of the Regular Canons of St. Ursinus in the suburb of Paris. For these are nothing else, in their whole prior part, than an imitation of the Acts of St. Martialis, in all those things in which the latter is said to have been present in the discipleship of Christ and of Peter: but how futile the rest are, you will easily understand, when you read, that when Ursinus was coming to Bourges, there was there a certain Senator, named Leochadius, it imitates the Acts of St. Martialis, who … established under the power of the Roman Emperor, in Burgundy and Aquitaine ruled most powerfully, and because he was subject to the Romans, therefore he did not dare to call himself King. You remember, I believe, almost the same words reported from the Acts of St. Martialis by Cordes at no. 7, and deservedly exploded: judge therefore the same of these, and estimate the age of Saturninus rather from the age of his disciple Firmin, and the paucity of successors who before Rodanius, subscribed for the year 358 to the Council of Béziers, only three are named, namely the holy ones Honoratus, Hilarius, and Silvius, and could have sufficed up to the most cruel persecution of all and the end of the 3rd century: but after this for some years the See was vacant (whence no one was present at the Synod of Arles in the year 314) but those who afterward were ordained, seem with the Saturninus of Arles to have deviated into the Arian heresy, and therefore to have been given to oblivion.

However it be, as regards the Acts of St. Saturninus of Toulouse, that none were written in antiquity, nor did any Life of St. Saturninus exist in antiquity, with de Marca, Bosquet also felt; and in book 1, ch. 18 he reviews three versions, of which the first two are most manifestly fabulous, when they make Saturninus the son of Egeas King of Achaia, and of Cassandra daughter of Ptolemy King of the Ninevites; and they wish him sent by Peter, under Claudius the Prince, who held the Imperial cares; and under Decius and Gratus, who were performing the Consulship. The third can be read in Surius, scarcely even themselves tolerable in many things; but it is better to reserve them to be discussed on the 29th of November; as also the Acts of the other Saints named at no. 27.

Meanwhile I seem to be able to conclude, what is now enough for the present matter; and so from them nothing certain is had. that the merely pretended tradition of peoples does not suffice, to establish the Epoch of the Gallican Bishops; while it appears, by the example of the Metropolises of Arles and Vienne, contending between themselves about the Primacy, that it came about that the other cities also aspired to the same prerogative of antiquity; then they also fabricated Acts consonant with it, often with such great negligence in pursuing verisimilitude, that they did not fear to take by loan what they had read elsewhere about others; just as above it befell those taking the deeds of St. Ursinus from the Acts of St. Martialis; and the Author of these, concerning the raising of Austriclinianus by the staff of St. Peter, writing the same things which at Trier were read of St. Eucharius, recalling to life St. Maternus.

MIRACLES

From our old parchment Manuscript.

Martialis, Bishop and Apostle of Limoges in Gaul (St.)

BHL Number: 5561, 5562, 5564, 5574, 5576, 5578

FROM A MS.

§. I. Some of the more ancient miracles performed at the tomb.

Therefore the most blessed Martialis, by what virtues he made himself known, a manifest account has conveyed: and those things which divine piety deigned to work after his death, at his venerable tomb, seem to be such as must be entered upon this page; that it may come about that the people may marvel, astonished.

[1] A certain girl, when she had lost the use of one of her hands, There are cured: a girl's contracted hand, so much that the points of the nails were piercing through her palm, sought the tomb of St. Martialis, and besought that he have mercy on her. She, the prayers of her orations being poured out, clinging to the very pavement, by a divine regard deserved to recover the former health of her withered hand. Which miracle was worked before the peoples standing by, who had flowed together for his festivity.

[2] In the same night also, what miracle appeared there, and one mute from birth: I thought by no means must be kept silent. A man mute from his birth, although he had lacked the use of his tongue, yet in his heart meditated to seek the memory of the blessed Man: where at once, having entered the thresholds, prayer being poured out to the Lord within himself, the rigid tongue is loosed, and he forthwith deserved both speech and hearing.

[3] Nor must that be omitted, which occurs worth the effort. deprived of speech for perjury,] For the obstinate stiff-neckedness of peoples is wont [to cause that one should strive to expiate by oaths some crimes objected against him. It happened that a certain man, when he had entered the church, was bound to defend by a wretched liberty a crime laid against him, of which he was held most manifestly guilty. Soon, his tongue growing rigid, his mouth was so locked, that he could by no means exercise the action of his lie: but as if he imitated the voices of bleating sheep. he recovers it at the tomb. But coming to the tomb of this Confessor, he prostrates himself to prayer: where, when he had lain rather long, it seemed to him as if someone were touching his throat. He, nodding to the Presbyter, to whom there the care of performing the Office had been committed, showed with his hand, that he should impress the sign of the Cross upon his throat. Which being done, again that man prostrated himself, devoting himself to prayer. When he had been raised from the pavement, the office of his voice being restored, all the things which had befallen him, he made known to the peoples in his own speech.

[4] Those about to fornicate at it, A certain woman, while she was exercising the foul mockery of her wretchedness, by the vice of the flesh; the man with whom she had mingled for the cause of this disgrace being found, for the shame of their crime, both sought the basilica of St. Martialis, lest publicly they be subjected to the discipline of the judges as condemned: and when from their guards they had escaped with fugitive step, they came to the tomb of the blessed Man. The doorkeeper not knowing it, within the cloister they are shut in; whom there is no doubt wished there obstinately to exercise their wretchedness. they are cast out by divine power, Who, not the door being unlocked, not the wall pierced through, not the glass of a window broken, but expelled by a divine nod, in a certain overflow of water, which appeared near at hand outside the basilica, with the returning light, the peoples thronging, are both found standing; so that their wretchedness, uncovered, appeared, and the virtue of the most blessed Man was shown in the deeds.

[5] A woman, from a serpent swallowed with water, That too must be added, which through the same Saint the Lord worked. A certain woman, struck by the burning of thirst at night, that she might temper the fire of her thirst; without a light seized a little vessel, in which she had drawn water: and while she drank most greedily, with the draught of water she unknowingly drank also a serpent: which, carrying within her for a long time, she began to be most grievously sick. She, to acquire for herself the remedy of the most blessed man, is freed. approached the basilica: where, when she had given herself to prayer, her bowels being moved, she vomited up the serpent alive; which being removed, she carried home with her the benefits of health.

[6] One who stole a Cross from the tomb, Let there be joined to the work, what present authority testifies. A certain one of those assisting at the Office of the holy Confessor, by name Marculf, armed by the instinct of diabolical persuasion, having entered the little cell in which the tomb of the blessed Man is enclosed, the Cross which above the tomb hung for the sake of ornament, with hand stretched out secretly by theft withdrew. That this thing might appear by a clear miracle, traversing the crossroads of various provinces, he produced the Cross to the market-traders, to be sold for money given: but by no means did anyone dare to buy it. He, while for a long time he wandered hither and thither, nor did the price of the article produced profit him at all; he is unable to sell it and brings it back. returning into himself, and struck by conscious shame, the Cross and moreover himself to the place, from which by the ill snares of the flattering enemy, by a thievish loss he had withdrawn, after a year or more, he presented: and by his profession he made public the cause of his deed; and publicly making satisfaction, he bore the penance of the crime committed.

[7] Up to now a recent notable miracle of the virtues shines forth. Two bound men are freed, It happened that a certain man was consigned to public custody, and was held bound by the bonds of chains. The guards being overcome by sleep, at night he escaped from custody, and sought the basilica of St. Martialis, still chained: where, the thresholds being touched, but yet the doors being locked, the chains were so broken to pieces, that the bound man was at once loosed: which chains also, by the testimony of the people, are seen hung up at once and broken. By a like cause another, while his neck

had been bound with wood, and he was being led to the custody of the prison; invoking the holy Man of God, at once the wood was torn from his neck and his hands, so that he seemed freed from the bond, who had perhaps been assigned to the outcome of death.

[8] While I was making mention of the rest of the virtues, there were offered to me, two contracted men are made upright, things which should be written upon the pages. Although often the Man of God has shown himself by manifest miracles, this nevertheless recent authority testifies. There came two men, one from the city of Tours, the other an inhabitant of this region, both with a like name, named Domolenus, struck with one debility of limbs; they sought the memory of the most blessed Man, their limbs being so contracted, that they walked rather with their hands than their feet, to restore the uses of their body. Who began with assiduous frequenting to bring themselves to the holy thresholds, praying that the connection of their veins and nerves be loosed. For whom, according to the quality of their faith, the debility of their limbs is repaired: and they who had been carried by others' hands, return by their own step from the tomb.

[9] Let there also be added that which can be joined to the mysteries. A blind man from the region of the city of Bourges, a blind man is given light, to restore his sight to himself, setting out with a guide preceding him on the way, was conveyed all the way to the place where the holy Bishop's miracles assiduously shine forth. He, when he had entered the threshold of the holy Confessor, bearing darkness instead of light, asked to be set down at the tomb of the most blessed Man. He, clinging a very long time to the pavement, asked by prayers that the light he had lost be restored to him. And when he gave himself to weeping and groanings, and his cheeks were bathed with bloody tears; the drops ceasing, all whatever was harmful is cleansed from his eyes, and light is restored to the blind man, to whom days had for a long time been reckoned for nights: and he who by another's guidance had been led to the tomb of the blessed Man, by his own step returned to his homeland.

[10] How much of the virtues of the most blessed Confessor, the report promulgating, by the faithful servants of God, the miracles grow frequent. I have proved with my own ears, even if with unskilled speech, I have thought must be inscribed upon this page: but the others, even if hidden from the peoples, shine forth to God; others are assiduously manifest in the cleansing and in the repairing of the disabled, in the relieving of the languishing, in the diverse gifts of all healings. Let there therefore be a common prayer; that when in the future examination the Lambs shall be parted from the goats, the just from the unjust by the supreme lot; he himself, our advocate for the purging of the stains of our crimes, may stand by, that, by his patronage, we may be able to pass from the left to the right, our Lord Jesus Christ granting it, who lives and reigns through all ages of ages. Amen.

§. II. Miracles written in the 7th, 8th, 9th centuries.

[11] When our Lord Jesus Christ deigned to descend into the lands in human flesh for the salvation of the human race, and taught his disciples to preach in the whole world, saying, "Go, The Saint shines in life and after death by miracles. teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all whatsoever I have commanded you": then Bl. Peter the Apostle by right sent the most blessed Martialis, with two Presbyters, into Gaul to the city of Limoges, and bade him preach to it, committed to him; that he might recall the people, who were vexed by demons in that very city, and ignorantly worshipped most foul idols, to the altar of Christ the Lord. Which he himself, within the space of a few days, according to his command, fulfilled: and in his life showed many virtues to the peoples, and after his death the Lord deigned to show many miracles through him, in the place where he himself reposes, causing the blind to be given light, the deaf to hear, and the mute to speak, withered hands and dissolved limbs to be restored, and those who were vexed by demons frequently to be cured. But because this is written in his acts, studying brevity, we avoid repeating his life: but those things which the Lord afterward worked through him, some of the many, we have decreed to indicate to you.

[12] When at a certain time Clothar the King of the Franks was established in his rule, Sent to Clothar II for a Bishop to be chosen, and according to custom the Bishop of the city of Limoges had died; the fellow-citizens of that same city came beseeching to the venerable tomb of St. Martialis, that he should show whom in that city they ought to ordain to the height of the Bishopric. So it seemed to them fit that they should direct the Matricularius, who was also Keeper of the burial-place of the same Saint, to the King himself, and should send the names written down of two Priests, his fellow-presbyters, with Royal honor; and whomever the King himself or his Nobles consented to, him in the aforesaid city according to the pastoral office he should substitute. But scarcely could they compel the aforesaid Matricularius, named Lupus, to go to the aforesaid King. Who, when he was hastening on the journey begun to the King's hall, asked many who met him about his petition, that they might make it known in the King's ears: but no one acquiesced. And when he with tears for days and nights had sought God's mercy and the intercession of the most blessed Martialis, it is shown to the Queen by a vision, that he might be able to find a means how he might make his petition known to the King; it happened that suddenly a most violent fever invaded the son of the King, and scourged him vehemently; so much, that they scarcely knew whether his soul was breathing in his body. And when his mother the Queen was celebrating a daily fast with groaning and mourning, thus, the sky dawning a little, she fell asleep; and it seemed to her, as if the aforesaid Priest, who had come from the monastery of St. Martialis, had there celebrated Mass, and had placed the Communion in the boy's mouth, and as if he himself, awakened, had embraced the Chalice, it is shown to the Queen healing her sick son: and what was contained in the Chalice as the sacrifice, he had drunk all, and thus had been made well and restored. And with fervor the aforesaid Queen, waking, began diligently to inquire, whether they had found there a Priest from Gaul, from Limoges. But when by no one about his dwelling could the truth be told, the servants rising began to run about the pleasantness of their palace, that if anyone could find him, they might hastily lead him to the chamber where the wearied boy lay.

[13] wherefore being sought, When here and there the King's servants had traversed all the places, and had not found him: the Queen began to weep, and to beseech the Lord, that he himself would show her that servant of the most blessed St. Martialis. But he himself, at the ninth hour of the day, according to custom, entered into the King's oratory; and when he was pouring out prayers with tears, the Nobles found him, and swiftly led him before the aforesaid Queen to the boy's chamber. And she in person recognized him, whom before she had seen in the vision; and prostrate at his feet, she begged him, beseeching that he should hastily celebrate Mass, and bring the Communion to her son. And he too with tears fulfilled the Queen's command, and proffered the Communion to the boy in his mouth; and the Chalice being embraced, all the Sacrifice which he found there, swiftly he drank, and thus appeared made well, as if he had never been sick. the boy being healed, he is given the Bishopric. And at once to King Clothar they brought the healthy boy at the same hour: and as great as the grief that had before come upon him, so great and through each particular his petition the aforesaid servant of God brought into the King's ears: to whom the King himself, inquiring, fulfilled his whole petition, and the honor which he had promised to others, by the intercession of St. Martialis, the Lord multiplied for him: moreover the mandate which he had desired he carried away with him; and many gifts having been received both from the King and from the Queen, together with a golden chalice, and on it the name of St. Martialis himself written, full of gold solidi, he directed home: which up to today is seen to be present for the ministry of that basilica. And the servant of God himself, who with a little ass had humbly gone to the King's hall; the aforesaid King made him sit on a horse with and with great triumph, by the intercession of St. Martialis, God helping, having received the office of the Pontificate, he returned in peace.

[14] At a certain time, when Ebroin the Count of the Palace, In the time of Ebroin, Mayor of the Royal household of the Franks, was present in the King's hall, and was vigorously subjecting all the wickednesses or iniquities which were done in all the land, the proud and iniquitous men, punishing them for their crimes; peace full and perfect smiled through all the land. Then there arose one young man, named Lupus, who wished to be the author of his own name i.e. to be a "wolf". He went to Felix, a most noble and renowned Patrician from the city of Toulouse, who held the principate over all the cities up to the Pyrenees mountains, and over the most wicked people of the Gascons. When he died, they set the aforesaid Lupus as Prince over them all, [Lupus, having obtained the Principate of Gascony, rebels against the King of France;] and all the vagrant and fugitive men adhered to him; and so great a crowd stood by him, that, by the devil's consent, the suggestion crept in, that he should make war on the King of the Franks, and set himself to stand in the Royal seat, and with his whole army take up the march, and hasten into those parts. He came, and bade the Bishop from that city, and all the fellow-citizens to be gathered to himself, that he might extort their fealty, and bind them to his rule. But when into the chamber where the burial of St. Martialis had deserved to be entombed, he had entered, he began to look closely at his tomb. Beholding which, he saw there a golden loin-girdle, adorned with precious gems, and he thought thereupon to carry it off. and wishing to take the girdle given to the Saint, But when he had entered to the threshold of the door of that cave, thus the Lord commanding and at the intercession of Bl. Martialis, a certain little man from that city, whose name was Proculus, seized a sword, and drove it into his brain. And when his comrades had begun to support him on this side and that, he bade some of the oil of the blessed Man, which in the lamp was kindled, to be brought to that wound. But at the same hour, with many beholding, a flame with smoke leaped out from that wound; and so great a trembling came there, that scarcely could any of those fellow-citizens hope to reach the night. he is grievously injured. But by the nod of God and at the intercession of the blessed Man, at the ninth hour of the day, to them peace and unspeakable joy came. And now the palace of the King of the Franks, and all the cities and castles fear and exceeding trembling and the rumor of it had invaded; whence, by the Lord's mercy, with the servant of God, the blessed man St. Martialis, helping and interceding, peace was at once restored to all.

[15] Nor does it seem must be passed over, One who stole gold from the Saint's tomb, what by this Saint's merits was done concerning a certain man, who rashly with sacrilegious hand secretly the gold which had hung over him, dared to covet. For when, among the throngs of peoples, by whose frequent zeal these thresholds are sought, for the cause of prayer, had come to the nocturnal Office, and in the sacred and divine worship, ill-conscious and mingled, kept vigil, not unmindful of his own

intent; when, the Office being finished, it seemed time to go from the church, he himself, investigating an entrance by the resolve of stealing, the others having gone out, into the crypt, where the buried body of the most holy Confessor had reposed, having entered, hid himself in the third little crypt, behind the tomb of Stephen, once the Duke. While therefore the guards went around the places of the church, and saw no one to be expelled, they closed the doors as usual. These being closed and locked, after the Matins labor of due service, they gave themselves to be refreshed by sleep. But the thief, going out from the hiding-place in which before he was concealed; the apples which there for the sake of smell hung down, by the madness of his hunger, first he began like a madman to seek to eat; and so to seize the golden things, of which then many and varied notable items shone there, with these he stuffs his gloves, fearless with a wounded mind he stretched out his hand; by which freely conciliating to himself so great which are rustically called "manufollia" gloves, with precious perils, his wish being attained, he filled. Which being filled up to the top, he sought the door of the crypt, as the doer of crime about to go out. And when he went around the other doors of the church for the sake of unlocking them, and had found no entrance through which he might go out; he was struck with so great a weight of sleeping, that he could not even sustain the mass of his head with his feet. By whose enormity, the forgetfulness of so great anxiety, who, falling asleep in that very place, placing the gloves laid underneath his head, gives before the very door of the crypt his sleepy limbs to the pavement, and began to puff his sleep, snoring with his whole breast.

[16] he is caught by the guards, When the awakened doorkeepers, stupefied, heard this, to see who had remained in the church, they approach, marveling. When they found him, while with their heels they kicked him to wake him; and with chiding words, demanded why or how he had remained; he tried to answer nothing in reply, except that he kept asking that they let him sleep. When they sharply insisted that he raise himself, and asked why there he had fallen asleep; since he obeyed no admonitions of those commanding, nor answered the questioners anything except that he was weighed down by sleep; one of the doorkeepers struck him a slap as he did not rise. By whose blow the gloves, which he had placed under his head warmed with gold, being opened upon the pavement of the church, as if hindered by the horror of the sacrilege, the ornaments of gems vomited into the light before witnesses. At which the keepers of the house, terrified, with raging anger proclaim that he must be consigned to thievish custody. Which case when they had brought to the elders of the church, by the common and general sentence of all they found, that by no human judgment should he be condemned, whom divine vengeance held guilty. Whence, benefits being bestowed on him for the punishment of his crime; and stripped of his prey, he is dismissed free. and wholesome admonitions being administered (the rest hearing, into whose council for the sake of example he was led), corrected, by the divine gift he departed, having now been made, lest others do such things, an example and a way of salvation. Which deed all who were present attributed to the virtues of the most holy Martialis; whose saving providence had permitted the mad mind of the peasant, in stealing the ornaments which he had wickedly coveted, to be sated; and after the malice was committed, by no means, that he might be more easily healed, did he wish him to be hidden by the sleep sent upon him: so that both the perverse will of his wickedness the peasant might perceive, and, the remedy being received, might proclaim the most merciful clemency of this Saint to all the malevolent.

[17] There was of the household of this holy Confessor debilitated and contracted in all his limbs, that like most similar to wild monsters. His misfortune his neighbors pitying, in a wicker basket they carried him to the threshold of this Saint; having hope in the mercy of the Lord Savior, that through the merits of St. Martialis he might receive the joys of health and soundness. Where, while for many times he kept watch, and was fed by the alms of good men; by such efforts as he could, he often dragged himself to the church with a tortoise-like gait, and according to the grasp of his understanding, panted for a double health from the Lord for himself. For with extreme leanness the limbs of the wretch lying were consumed; each one clinging to its bones, and dire filth occupying his whole little body, scarcely in his languid mouth a thin voice resounded. And while he labored with such sickness, and keeping watch at the tomb, and grieved over his prolonged misery; it happened that a very great crowd, coming to these thresholds with zeal for praying, here among the languishing, whose immense throngs kept watch at the doors of the church, sought the nocturnal vigils for the cause of his salvation. Whom, when a certain noble matron beheld among the rest lying down; fearing lest he be trampled by the heels of the multitude (because, as we said, he seemed like a puppy to those beholding) she ordered him to be carried by her servants' hands to the lodging where she was being lodged. She, when by the rousing signals to the nocturnal vigils she had risen, again by her servants' hands caused him whom she had before carried to be carried back; and lest he be hurt by the people, in the crypt, where at that time the body of St. Martialis had lain, upon the marble pavement she ordered him to be placed.

[18] Where while the languishing man, tossing his arranged limbs, rested; the nocturnal Office being now half completed, with great torment he is straightened, his joints, his sinews being relaxed, began little by little to raise themselves, and to seek the places of their former health. In whose motion the wretch boiled with most hard pains, and over the marble pavement in the greatest anguish was rolled: for to no one, through excessive weariness, openly with his voice did he, complaining, press home his pain; but by the torsions of his body he showed the greatest pain of his limbs being raised. For by the virtue of this holy Confessor and his merits, with great torments of his body, to raise the bonds and knots of his body, he was tortured; and as if by certain internal and external anguishes, he was healed by the heavenly medicament. In which most grievous pain he tarried for some time, when upon the soles of his feet, because flesh was lacking to his bones, he could not stand by himself, and his joints being raised he did not yet have at all the office of walking; the Keeper entering, who was at that time, and carefully seeing these things, and his flesh not yet supplied, he is carried away still feeble. when he had understood him to be cured by the heavenly visitation, and through the merits of the Saint raised into his former health; upon his own shoulders, from the inner parts of the crypt, he carried him out to the peoples to be seen. Whom all who before had known him, beholding, gave thanks to the Lord Jesus Christ, who through his holy Bishop does not cease daily to work such great and such miracles among his people: whose notable signs of virtues, which through him divine piety assiduously works innumerable, if we should desire to tell; either the dryness of our speech could not embellish, or memory retain.

[19] Of the soldiers of the Emperor Louis, one, Finally at a certain time, when the Emperor Louis was residing, with a great army of the Franks, at the Palace of Jocondiac; very many places round about, neighboring, were vexed in plunderings and the pastures of robbers, which the aforesaid army devastated: for as far as this city of Limoges the army of the Franks was spread, and residing round about, with their horses fed down the crops and pastures. For no reverence of the Saints, whose pledges relics our city cultivates, restrained them from this plundering, although they are held peacefully and religiously as if naturally: indeed, whose merits they neither had read, nor knew by flashing miracles: about to reap the crop of the monastery, for which reason without distinction, even the crop of this holy Confessor, a servant of a certain Frank seeking, had gone to reap with a sickle. While without divine regard he was cutting it, and had cut off a fistful handful; as if doing injury to the Saint of God, to whom in gathering the crop the presumptuous man had paid no honor, he beheld his hand with the handful contracted. While, repenting of the deed, he is contracted in both hands; he wished, now fearful, to throw away the sickle from the other hand, and beheld stupefied, grieving, that this too had grown stiff at once: for there was by the wall, by which that monastery is girded, a northern field, where by the divine vengeance the plundering servant of the harvest shuddered, confounded.

[20] and, his companions making satisfaction for him, When this was done, the Franks, who had heard or seen, disturbed, in no small crowd came together to see the miracle. Where, when they had beheld the man of their own nation stupefied, and grieved that he was contracted in both hands; and beheld him bereft of light; by a common satisfaction of their humility to implore pardon for him who had been struck, by prudent counsel they chose. Then, unshoeing themselves alike, with great humility of mind and burning tapers, that very man who had been struck, before the presence of this Saint, with bare steps they led. Where while tearfully they implored pardon for the ignorance of their negligence, the pious athlete of the Lord did not cease to confer his accustomed piety on the petitioners: for both him for whom they had prayed he rendered whole and sound, and so bestowed and gave them knowledge of himself from that very time, that no plundering thereafter in his pastures and crops was inflicted by the Franks beholding these things. he is healed. For so he had afterward been venerable and to be honored by them in all things, that they preached to one another, that none of them should presume in the things of the most holy Martialis to take or accept anything, without a worthy price.

NOTES OF D. P.

being dead, in the year 614, of his own age 31. Under him, however, would have died the Bishop Asclopius, or Asclepiodorus, reported in the Limoges Martyrology on December 23.

e By this name the Bishop is called (for below the Bishopric is said to be conferred on him by Clothar) he is found in the year 638 to have subscribed to the foundation of Solignac.

died in the 36th year of her husband, that is of Christ 619: after whom, Sichildis being married, she bore him Charibert, afterward King of Toulouse, who died in the year 637, leaving a son. But which Queen, and consequently whose son, is here understood, I do not divine. Clothar himself died in the year 628.

g Ebroin under Clothar III began to perform that office; a most praised Prince at the beginning, but, Clothar dying in the 5th year of his reign, of Christ 664, the cause and author of many disturbances, and at last killed in the year 688.

of the Goths Wamba in the year 607 into Gaul, describes to us at length the shameful flight of Lupus, then Duke of the Franks, who seems to be indicated here.

p Here some Translation of the holy body is indicated, after these things were done; which below is said more clearly at no. 21.

q I understand Louis the Pious, the son of Charlemagne, who in the year 813, declared Emperor by his father still living, returned with an army into Aquitaine, to defend it against the Saracens.

r The same is in the Tournai manuscript. Bernard Gui in Labbe, vol. 2 of the library, p. 266, names the palace "Johanneciacum"; he himself substitutes "Jogunciacum" in parenthesis. De Valois in his Notitia of the Gauls acknowledges that it is so read in the Life of St. Genulf; meanwhile he does not doubt that it is the Palace "Jucundiacum," commemorated in the Life of Louis the Pious for the year 796, as situated in the territory of Limoges; elsewhere more corruptly, "Andiacum," commonly "Joac."

* he had carried reading correction

§. III. Miracles done after the year 852 and written by a contemporary.

These are, out of many, a few miracles which, for the merit of his Confessor St. Martialis, the Lord worked after the Translation of his body, in the year of the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ eight hundred fifty-two, The Author writes that various persons were cured in his time, in the 15th Indiction, the most pious King of Gaul reigning through the provinces, Charles, son of the late Augustus Louis, the merits and prayers of the most blessed Martialis, Confessor of Christ, supporting; upon diverse sick persons, in diverse places, the divine virtue began to prevail; yet especially around the basilica, where the precious body of him reposes; so that both those who saw and those who heard, astonished, marveled hither and thither, the peoples; and there occurs a concourse of peoples of almost the whole province; and not only the fellow-citizens, but also the inhabitants of the other, neighboring provinces, hasten thither with burning love. Among whom also a multitude of the languishing runs together, by his prayers and merits desiring to receive health. But because all the things which there by God were done, on account of the multitude, we cannot relate; let us commemorate even a few of these: for indeed nothing else is to be said by us, except what we either have seen with our eyes, or know most certainly from most approved men.

[22] For a certain man, named Peter, who had lost both hearing and speech, and individually, a mute and deaf man, by that same people came to the basilica of the aforesaid holy Man, trusting in the mercy of God: who, as soon as he entered the tomb, where he himself long ago had reposed, at once deserved to recover his hearing. A woman named Fredildis, who had been a native of the soil of Périgueux, had a daughter named Ingelrada, who from her birth had lacked the office of her tongue; and when for twenty and more years through diverse places, where the bodies of the Saints repose, they had led her about, nothing profited. To her on a certain night it was revealed in a vision, a woman mute from birth, that she should come to the tomb of the aforesaid Confessor, and there obtain that which she sought. When she had done this, even before she had reached the church, with an unaccustomed tongue she began to praise God.

[23] It remains for us to bring forward into the midst that which at that very time the Lord worked in another. A certain noble man [Bernold by name] in that very district of Limoges, a man possessed by a demon, had was wont to be vexed by unclean spirits; and for and valleys or precipices he roamed about. He too, taking care for his son, on a certain day traversing the mountains and valleys with his household, seized him; and at once compelled him to come to the church of the holy Man: but before he reached it, he deserved to recover his sense and understanding.

[24] At the same time indeed, the disease which in common speech is called gout struck a multitude of peoples; so that their hands and feet, many cured of gout, being burned with a vast burning, were reduced to nothing: of whom also many were brought to the aforesaid church, who also deserved to receive health. Among whom also was a woman, named Ermenildis, who also by the aforesaid evil was struck in her foot: and again fleeing to the tomb of the blessed Bishop, she received health no less: which up to a third time was done. To her it happened, that on the most holy night, the Saint appearing to one, on which the nativity of our Redeemer was to be celebrated, while the Monks of that church were singing, she fell asleep; and it was said to her in sleep, that the linen which she carried for a covering she should bring to the Monk who was appointed to the office of preaching, with a candle, and soon she would receive health. Believing this vision most certainly, at once when full day came, what had been said to her, without any delay she fulfilled; and so indeed she was healed, that thereafter she felt no evil in her foot.

[25] likewise a blind woman twice given light. Meanwhile it must not be passed over, what in another woman the Lord there worked. A certain girl, Christiana by name, from the soil of Périgueux, daughter of Daibert, from her birth had not seen the light: who, hearing the miracles that in that place, by the merits of the blessed Man, were done, with burning soul came thither, and the light which she had not seen, she saw. She, filled with joy, the light being perceived, indiscreetly tried to return to her own home. But before she reached her own house, the light which she had received being lost, just as she had been, she remained in darkness. But not doubting of God's piety, with the greatest speed, to the tomb of the Man of God she came again; and the light, which she had first received, she received again.

[26] At that time indeed all around Aquitanian Gaul was being grievously laid waste by the nation of the Normans: in the Norman incursion who, laying waste almost everything to utter destruction, that had been around the maritime parts; having received safe-conduct, came all the way to Limoges: and the people of that land, perceiving that they could not bear their violence, especially because among themselves they were then divided, leaving the city, were dispersed hither and thither. In which days in the aforesaid city a certain man, named Elisaeus, was, who from the soil of Albi to the tomb of the blessed Man had been carried by others' hands: to whom it had happened, that on the Lord's day, while he took sleep around midday, a paralytic of 8 years, as he himself narrated, he lost the office of going and the motion of his right hand, and remained without gait and without the office of his hand for eight years. But he asked for many days the intercession of the blessed Prelate, frequenting his basilica. The citizens being put to flight, when no one pitied him in going; moved by exceeding terror, fearing lest the city, according to the barbarous custom of those men, be burned with fire, and he himself with it; left alone, he is not hurt: by divine nod, with only one hand and his knees crawling, from the city into the open square he withdrew himself. And while they went around and circled the city, so that he was almost trodden by the heels of their feet; so the divine grace protected him, that he seemed not a man to them, but a beast or a boar: and very many in the city presumptuously remaining being killed, this man remained unharmed. But when they withdrew from the city, and returned to the places whence they had come, and the fellow-citizens returned; he, by others' hands, to the tomb of the aforesaid Confessor, was again carried. But not long after one party had returned, and were solemnly keeping the Lord's day there; the third hour being performed, all the bells being rung according to custom for the divine Office, at the same time we too began to give praises to God; and God, through the merits of his most holy Man, to grant health to this man: and finally being carried to the Saint's tomb, he is healed. and so by divine ordination it was brought to pass, that at one hour both those performing the solemnities of the Masses made an end, and to his infirmity God gave a term; so that he who on the Lord's day, around the midday hour, had been struck by the demon while sleeping; on the very day of his the Lord's Resurrection, did not sleep; but waking, and persisting in prayer, around the third hour, through the virtue of the Holy Spirit, and also the merit of our Confessor, was restored to his own health; and he who by his own strength to hear the benefits of God could not come, the health of his body being received, by his own steps, whither his will led him, hastened: whom afterward frequenting that place, we beheld for a long time.

[27] Among the other notable signs of his virtues, the most blessed athlete of God, Martialis, one which especially in our time he performed, Louis the Younger invading Aquitaine, an astonishing miracle to see, is not to be passed over in silence. When Louis, son of Louis the German King, divided the fraternal peace by bursting into the Aquitanian borders; and presumed, by striving, to claim for himself the governance of his uncle Charles, and to transfer it to himself; in tyrannical manner, as is wont in such warfare, through the cities and very many places of this kingdom, greedy for glory, he was borne. His unlawful attempts the pernicious cohort following imitated, the rustic host with the urban peoples, with wicked soldiery it devastated. For there was an army mingled of a promiscuous multitude, of Franks powerful in war and Thuringians, also Alemanni and Bavarians; nor was there, all hastening to plunder, reverence or moderating measure or honesty. Of whom indeed one, an Aleman noble by birth, one soldier more insolent, named Scrotulf, while in the rash plundering more eminent, without restraint with untamed manners he raged, so indeed that not even with his heel did he fear to break the doors of churches, by a consonant sentence of divine vengeance, was enormously struck in his whole body. Which when his whole company of companions and kinsmen beheld with sad gaze, and with groaning breast lamented; the magnitude of that vexation, by the sacred merits and intercessions of this holy Bishop Martialis, they judged to be loosed. For there was an intolerable pain and an enormous torment of the bowels, so much indeed that, destitute of the offices of all his limbs, the vital spirit alone quivered in his breast, he is wholly deprived of life; and only a dead image was seen, rather than any pressure of infirmity. For sight with hearing he had lost, and his accustomed speech with all (as I said) the natural motion of his limbs had failed; so that rigid in his whole body, with unmoving eyelids he lay and with open eyes.

[28] who, commended by the King to St. Martialis, Isaiah 28, 29 Such a man therefore, that is, dead in every part, to this Saint's venerable and salutary tomb, the sad fellowship of his companions carried him to be cured. At last the wretched man lay, and to all beholding marvelous and to be lamented: and only, the Prophet being witness, vexation gave understanding to hearing. For the Bishops who came among the rest marveled at him, and from the exceeding pressure of his torments and pains, with horrible stupor were present, the trembling perpetrators of this slaughter and pestilence. Which when to the ears of their King the report had brought, not only of the kinsmen, but also of others beholding; they asked that he himself should seek for him the Monks here serving God, that to the pious Lord and his holy Pontiff Martialis they should pour out the prayer of petition, and grieve with the tears of the kinsmen. Which

when it was done, with great devotion and faith, they prostrated him before this Confessor's tomb to be healed. Meanwhile, when after rapid courses and wicked endeavors, King Charles, coming with the Franks, the Aquitanian arms being joined, had expelled the Alemanni, and for 40 days carried to the tomb, and compelled his nephew by headlong flight to seek again his own lands; the pestilent disease growing worse, this one invader, with only a few men of his service, is left behind; and on account of the evil which by the consent of his companions he had committed, here with panting groans on the ground penally he was anguished. Where, while under the pressing sickness he kept watch, and by his men's hands before the most holy Confessor's tomb with frequent solicitude in a vehicle he was carried, for a space of forty and more days he labored, in which he had taken nothing of food, except cold water, which through a tube placed to his lips penally he swallowed; nor did any natural necessity impel him to the privy; whom, besides water (as we said), no bodily eating sustained. The frequent devotion of his men around him, at Mass and the evening Hours more especially before the other Hours, through all the aforesaid space, daily in a carrying-chair, rigid, carried him; and with present service and most pious care, that he might receive the Lord's mercy, besought.

[29] But so great a time in this satisfaction being spent, when now no hope at all among human minds of his recovery was further held; at last the Saint appearing to him, this Confessor of the Lord with his accustomed piety did not cease, by the remedies of his intercessions, mercifully to visit him. For when, as was custom, on a certain day before his tomb, by the hands of those carrying he was carried; and only the heavenly medicine, by the vows of good men, and of those Monks here then living, with frequent and compunctive prayers, and now as if at the last, was sought, the presence of this holy Confessor stood by him, seen. There seemed to him a Pontiff in ecclesiastical vestments, and a Bishop in priestly dignity, who, taking the disabled man by the chin with his most sacred hand, bent him, as it seemed to him, to adore the Lord. By which, as it is right to believe, happy vision waking, with languid effort and sick striving, just as in sleep he had seen, he is restored to health. he tried to stretch himself upon the pavement, and, his body being laid down, to adore the Lord. Whose will those who were present, attending with attentive nod, before the tomb swiftly with serving attendance prostrated him. Where while he lay extended, his native voice being restored, the Lord and his Saint Martialis the Pontiff, giving thanks, little by little he began with supplication to praise: and at once his sight with his hearing receiving, the heavenly aid, groans being given, he panted for: and for himself the former health, with future amendment, with words and vows as he could, he besought. Which the bystanding servants, when they saw, and were filled with sudden and unhoped-for joy, they began in barbarian rite and tongue, because their lord was speaking, to cry out. These things being heard, the Monks, who in the sacred Offices of the vigils were keeping watch, exulting with exceeding joy for the shown miracle, by the clatter of the bells divulging the fame of so great for the soundness of this man.

NOTES OF D. P.

a It is uncertain to me whether I should say we have here the conclusion of the prior Paragraph, or the beginning of the present one; since it appears that the prior too was written after the Translation. Lombardelli in the Appendix to the Italian Life, ch. 1, says the Translation was made 600 years after the Saint's death, and so in the 7th century, in his opinion, which ascribes that death to the 1st century; and that to a new church, dedicated to the Mother of God and to St. Stephen, which is today called St. Martialis. Would that something more certain and more ancient about it were had. One thing from no. 33 we can say, that it was made before the death or even the ordination of St. Eligius, who, after the middle of that century, brought some Relics of St. Martialis to Paris, into a church there to be dedicated to him.

degenerate from their proper signification. But the miracle which is here reported, also occurs in the Tournai manuscript (whence I have supplied here the father's name) and where the son's name is written "Walvardus."

g Louis, nephew of Charles the Bald, came into Aquitaine in the year 855, and, things not flowing according to his wish, returned about Autumn whence he had come. The Tournai manuscript writer, seeking a compendium, made a loss to history, when he wrote the matter done in the time of King Louis, when after the death of his father Charles he wished to occupy the kingdom.

§. IV. Other miracles from the Tournai manuscript, drawn out by Brother Joseph Ignatius of St. Anthony, Discalced Carmelite.

[30] In the time of the Emperor Basil, three Nobles, from a certain city, Tarascon, which is beyond the city of Toulouse by a journey of three days, out of devotion were visiting the threshold of Bl. Martialis. A deaf and mute man, found on the road, While they were proceeding on the way, a certain young man, deaf and mute from the womb, was present to them on the way; and by such nods as he could, he began to ask that they lead him with them. And when on account of the burden of the journey they refused to do this; one of them, having compassion, said: Let us not dismiss this man, for he wishes to go to the Apostle, to ask his help. So they led him for a day, and at night they made signs to him, that he should return to his own home. The mute man refused, and by such indications as he could he kept entreating, that they lead him with them, to obtain which he humbly prostrated himself on the ground. Having compassion therefore on him, they led him, and when to the city of Périgueux they had come, as being nearer to safety, greater signs of joy he displayed; and led to the tomb, and the more he approached the city of Limoges, which he had never seen, the more joyful he seemed in his face, and most openly he busied himself with the services of his guides. When therefore before the tomb of Bl. Martialis they had come, they began for their mute man more urgently to entreat the clemency of St. Martialis, the grace being obtained, blood bursting out through his organs: and to allege the marvels which he did in others; praying Bl. Martialis, that he would show in this mute man, what they might be able to relate in their parts. Wonderful to tell! about cockcrow, all keeping watch and singing the Matins praises, a great abundance of blood through his mouth, and nostrils, and ears went out, and the mute man at once received hearing and speech: and he who had come mute, the praises of the Apostle magnificently sang. This miracle, moreover, was written by him who saw the fresh blood on his cheeks.

[31] A certain boy from Auvergne, who had been mute from childhood, likewise a mute boy. was brought by his parents to St. Martialis, and there left with the keepers; which boy long persevered at Limoges, nor recovered his speech. At last when the people on a certain day kept the festivity of Bl. Martialis, and the boy near the tomb of Bl. Martialis was praying; blood he vomited from his mouth, and at once began to speak: which boy afterward did not appear, but the traces of blood remained, and the man's mouth and clothes with blood were sprinkled.

[32] A certain man from the diocese of Périgueux, while on a certain day he wished to wash himself in a certain fountain, A certain man blinded by seeing a specter, the enemy in the fountain, in the likeness of a certain dead man, appeared; and water being thrown into his eyes, he deprived him of the sight of his eyes. And when long he had been blind, and the divine clemency for recovering his sight he had more frequently invoked, his lost eyes in this manner he deserved to recover. He saw indeed for three nights in a vision, that he was in a certain palace in the city of Limoges before Bl. Martialis; where he recovered his lost eyes by the virtue of the most blessed Martialis. When therefore to a certain learned man he had related the vision; that learned man advised that he should at once set out on the road, which he also did. Nor on the way did the help of Bl. Martialis fail him. For when to certain deserted villages he had come, on the journey to the Saint he is divinely fed, and as if he would perish of hunger; finding no lodging, he entered a certain oven, where two loaves of marvelous size and sweetness he found, from which through the whole way he refreshed himself; which provision in firm hope of recovering his health wonderfully confirmed him. When therefore to the city of Limoges he had come, and to pour out prayer did not cease, his cure was deferred, that by a greater astonishing miracle it might be seen. and at him he is given light. The blind man therefore continuing the urgency of his prayers; in mid-Lent, on a certain Lord's day, from his eyes boiling and smoky water more abundantly flowed: which ceasing, the light of his eyes perfectly returned; and to his own land he returned seeing, who blind had come to a foreign land.

[33] At a certain time also it happened, that Bl. Eligius renewed a chapel, While his Relics are carried to Paris, formerly built in the city of Paris in honor of Bl. Martialis, which as if fallen and destroyed had been. The church therefore being renewed, and even covered with lead, with a great multitude accompanying, the Relics of Bl. Martialis Bl. Eligius wished to carry to the renewed church. When therefore he could go more directly, before the prisons, where seven men were detained chained, he wished with the Relics of blessed Martialis to make his passage, not doubting that in honor of the said Relics the Lord would show his accustomed marvels. for the church to be dedicated by St. Eligius, The Relics therefore are carried; and the excellent Confessor Eligius, like another David before the ark, before the Relics of Bl. Martialis with heart and body exulted. When therefore carrying the Relics he had come before the door of the prison; he could not move himself, nor make a step; all who were present insisting, and compelling him to proceed, and to carry the Relics. He confessed therefore who carried the Relics, the chains of the captives are loosed. that he could not move his feet. And when all stood astonished, at once a light thunder began to be heard in the prison, to be shaken from the depths, and the chains and fetters began to be broken; and the bolts and locks being shattered, the doors are opened; the captives go out; and entering the church, they proclaimed the marvels of Bl. Martialis.

[34] The Lord John Gerald, Bishop of Agen, The Bishop of Agen is cured of a fever: also related; that when of a quartan fever he was sick, and in full winter much was afflicted, and could find no remedy with the means of cure; he promised St. Martialis with the highest devotion, that if the quartan left him, every year with offerings he would visit his church. This vow being uttered, the quartan fever being finished, he was at once freed; and from then on he was familiar with and devoted to Bl. Martialis.

[35] At another time also, the whole city of Paris began to be consumed by a strong burning of fire; for

the flames were carried on every side, St. Eligius invoking him, the fire of his church is quenched: and so near the monastery of Bl. Martialis the ball of fire was devastating each thing, and it was near, that the covering of the basilica, (which Bl. Eligius had made of lead) should be melted. Seeing which, Bl. Eligius invoked the help of Bl. Martialis; crying out, that if Bl. Martialis allowed his church to be burned, never would he himself, who had once repaired it, repair it. Forthwith therefore the flame is directed to the opposite quarter, and the church of Bl. Martialis is freed from the fire.

[36] as a remedy for the holy fire At a certain time, iniquity growing strong, and charity growing cold, the wrath of God, the sins demanding it, began to rage against the people. For through all parts of Aquitaine and the Gauls, fire was burning men and women, boys and virgins and old men. The divine vengeance did not spare any age: for in this one the fingers were burned, in another the hands, in another the arms, in another the feet and shins, in another the rest of the parts of the body were consumed by the burning of fire. And if for the sake of refuge in the place of pain a liquid of water were placed, more and more the pain was increased, and a fetid smoke was emitted, which corrupted the air. The Prelates consult, what must be done: and at last, counsel being decided, there is one voice of all, the elevation of the body is decreed: that to the patron of Aquitaine, Bl. Martialis, recourse be had for help, and his body be elevated from the earth, that by his patronage every infirmity might be expelled. The Bishops gather, the peoples flow together; and to the place where the body was, they approach: the earth is shaken, the air is filled with sweetness of odor: the body of the holy Apostle is raised, the surrounding sick people is healed; and the Saint's body is carried outside, that he who could not approach and the carrying onto a mountain. might be healed. It is carried to a mountain, which from then on has been called Mont-Joie (Mountain of Joy), and all the bystanding people was healed. The healthy peoples rejoice, and magnify the praises of the Apostle, who can confer on the sick the health of the body. The Bishops return, the peoples return, proclaiming everywhere on earth the wondrous power of the Apostle.

[37] A young man of Angoulême It is handed down by the ancients, that while Bl. Martialis went into Mauretania, he passed through the diocese of Angoulême, where a church was then built in his honor by the worshippers of Christ; in which are Relics of his hair; in which God marvels in his honor has continually worked. But in that land a certain Soldier, young in body, who long had lived unchastely, was vexed by malign spirits: for he was agitated by such furies, that he tore himself, and was bound with wooden chains. To the thresholds therefore of many Saints he had been led by his parents, nor by any was he restored to health; nay the demon cried out through his mouth: In vain, wretches, do you labor; for there is not in Aquitaine one. And when, under the conjuration of the Crucified, the name of that Saint was sought; possessed by nine demons on account of lust, the demon, compelled, said: Your Prince Martialis, who nine of our companions, first from the city of Hurdeg, finally from Mauretania, while he lived, expelled, and into hell sent to be tortured. But we in this man are nine, and Bl. Martialis we greatly fear. On the next day that wretched possessed man to the aforesaid church is brought, and by the demons before the door is thrown down prone as if dead, and the terrible voice of the demons is heard in the church: Why, the demons confessing that they could be cast out by Martialis alone, Hebrew Martialis, do you inflict on us such great torments? why do you defend lustful flesh? Thus therefore for fifteen days they vexed the wretched man, nor did they permit him to be refreshed with food or drink. These being completed, at the third hour, blood through his mouth being sent forth, they departed from him, no more to return into him. The man fell to the earth, and like one dead appeared up to the ninth hour. When therefore his friends had prepared all the funeral things, and him, as is the custom, wished to consign to burial; at once he rose well, and refreshed with food and drink, said, that he, [led] by nine Ethiopians to the mouth of a certain infernal depth, seeing the same one, he is freed. whence the stench of flames exhaled: and when there into the deep he should have been plunged; by a certain one clothed in linen and venerable gray hair, who lilies in his right hand, an iron rod in his left, carried, was freed. Who with the iron rod struck the Ethiopians on the necks, and plunged them into the lower parts of the pit, and bade his soul return to his body, enjoining that from uncleanness he abstain. Nor is there doubt that this was St. Martialis, who was clothed in linen, on account of the Apostolic dignity, and held the iron rod on account of that authority which he has over the demons.

[38] A certain woman also, a native of Limoges, gave her body to excessive pleasure, likewise a possessed woman. on account of which she was handed over to the power of demons. She by her own people before the tomb of the Apostle is brought; and the demons through her mouth in the form of coals throwing out, she is freed.

[39] In Auvergne near Clermont it happened, as I heard by the report of men worthy of credit, a peasant violating the Saint's feast and blaspheming, a certain marvel, which is not to be passed over in silence. A certain priest of Bl. Martialis had enjoined upon his parishioners, exhorting that on the feast of so great a Saint they should cease from all servile work. But it happened that a certain man of his parish, the edict of his Priest being despised, the sheaves which he had at home, in the sun placed, that the heat of the sun, by burning, might dry them, being damp. And when by his neighbors, who were ceasing from work, he was rebuked, despising those rebuking, he is punished by the burning of his sheaves: just as he had despised the command of the Priest, he answered: When Martialis should come from Limoges, the sheaves will be thoroughly dried. Wonderful to tell. The clearness was very great, nor in the air did any cloudy sign appear: yet scarcely had he completed his speech, and fire descended from heaven, and all the sheaves so thoroughly consumed, that of them only dust remained. From which it evidently appeared, how swift was the punishment, because he despised the feast of St. Martialis.

[40] Near St. Macaire and Langoiran in caused corn from the field to be reaped, and the sheaves in to his house, and was preparing his ass, wishing the sheaves with the ass to carry off; fire descended from heaven, and all the sheaves and even the stubble of the field down to the ground it burned; and thence to the house, which was distant a good shot of a crossbow, it flew, and the house it burned and the ass; and scarcely did the man escape, terrified and grieving, that on so great a feast he had been working to the injury of St. Martialis.

[41] At a certain time Stephen, the Bishop of the Arverni, The Saint's altar recently consecrated in honor of Bl. Martialis in the monastery of Aurillac consecrated an altar: [for] a certain blessed Gerald, still living, had there brought relics of Bl. Martialis. That altar being consecrated, on the same day, the Bishop ordering, is more becomingly adorned, more beautifully covered, and more venerably decorated. Which a certain Soldier, forbidding it to be more becomingly adorned, is chastised: proud of mind, taking it ill, and uttering blasphemies against St. Martialis, said: St. Martialis is not nobler than the other Saints, and therefore his altar does not become and the pall, with which the altar was covered, he wished to take away. Scarcely had he touched the fringe, and at once he fell backward, in both hands made a leper, mute in mouth, turned into madness, and in his whole body dissolved; and so he remained, until by the Bishop's order before the consecrated altar he was led, and the Bishop for him devoutly prayed, and so health he received, and the great deeds of Bl. Martialis he proclaimed.

[42] It happened also to me, who am abbreviating the above, that when in a certain church, situated in the diocese of Agen, near Port-Sainte-Marie, which church is called Bassanes, and is founded in honor of Bl. Martialis; I myself, the people standing by, the people gathered for a Sermon about the Saint through diverse miracles, declaring, that Bl. Martialis had great power over demons; a tempest arose: for a tempest of thunders and hail suddenly arose. Seeing which, the people, terrified, began to send forth strong cries and bellowings. But I, hoping in the accustomed aid of Bl. Martialis, gave them hope, that if they were silent, and heard the Sermon of Bl. Martialis, Bl. Martialis would keep them from harms and inconveniences: which also he did with his accustomed goodness. For the vineyards and corn of the neighboring parishes perished, it suffers no harm from the tempest. and the haystacks of that parish remained wholly unharmed. From which it appears, that those dishonoring St. Martialis are punished, while those honoring [him] obtain with God and the Saint the effect and consolation of their petition. Let therefore the dry tongue cease from reciting his miracles, whose power does not cease from working continual miracles; but may the Son of God, by his prayers, lead us to the undefiled body of glory, to which he himself, with the same Son of God, attained, to reign forever. Amen.

NOTES OF D. P.

the year 867 to 886; and Basil, son of Romanus the Younger, with his brother Constantine, from the year 975 to 1025. Of the former rather I would believe this is treating: but he who wrote these things, a Monk, wished to seem a smatterer; substituting for the King of the Franks, whom the older Writer no doubt named, him of whom no account was had among the Franks.

the Vienne river, in the district of Tours, and is distant from its own Metropolis 8 leagues, but from Limoges about 50 leagues; and from Toulouse as much again. This place therefore is most corrupt, nor do I see how it can aptly be corrected; especially since from the city of Périgueux soon to be named, which must be passed through before one comes to Limoges, it appears that a place is required, situated to the south of this, not to the north. Such are Tarascon and Carcassonne, both above Toulouse, with respect to Limoges, placed at a three-day journey; the latter more Eastern, but nearer to Chinon by the identity of the first letter; the former more Southern, whence to those going to Limoges, Toulouse and Périgueux are on the way; not so if one goes thither from Carcassonne.

according to Henschen in the Lives of the Dagoberts, and elsewhere, ordained Bishop in the year 646, died in the year 665. In the Life, written by St. Audoenus in Surius on December 1, something similar is narrated, done on another occasion, ch. 15, which he himself ascribed to the merits of St. Simplicius.

the year 1281 to 1383. I would rather understand here one of the former. But Limoges is distant from Agen about 30 leagues, so that for both the midpoint is Périgueux.

Monastery of Hurdaspalum, which place his Commentator Ambrose Morales says is situated at the roots of the Pyrenees, on the borders of Spain, 5 leagues from Bayonne; commonly called Urdache, which I think is indicated here.

* rather, "refrigenum" reading correction.

ANALECTA

On the Churches, Relics, and cult of St. Martialis.

Martialis, Bishop and Apostle of Limoges in Gaul (St.)

FROM A MS.

§. I. On the Collegiate church of Limoges, keeper of the sacred body, turned into a monastery, and on its first Abbots.

Although the fabulous Acts of this Saint ascribe to him the foundation, dedication, and endowment of the Cathedral church of St. Stephen, such as would be fitting in the fourth or fifth century; yet the Author did not so go mad, as to write that he was also buried there; but he indicates that he was entombed outside the city (according to the custom of the first centuries, common to Gentiles, The Saint buried in a suburban cemetery, Jews, and Christians), when he asserts that an oratory or church of St. Peter was built on the possession of Valeria, certainly suburban; and that in it he himself, to the West, established a tomb of burial for himself… But when for burial his body was being carried, at the hour of departure from the Basilica of St. Stephen, the heavens were opened, and by their opening showed the way to all, by which his holy members, to be entombed, were to be carried. Always, as they proceeded, the heavens were opened, not within the city, up to the place of burial; namely when he was carried out by night, as was fitting to be done under the Gentiles: yet let the credit of the miracle be rather with the tradition than with the Author, who invented so many things from his own brain.

[2] I would believe meanwhile, that, ecclesiastical peace being established through Constantine, where he had had an oratory: the faithful people of Limoges in that very place within the city, where St. Martialis had established an oratory for holding the sacred assemblies, when it was permitted; had erected a larger and public church under the name of St. Peter, now called "of the Crossroads"; where for some time they were wont to bury their Bishops; just as he writes was the custom, who to the Letters supposititiously attributed to St. Martialis added the reckoning of his testimony. I would believe also that the same church was the Cathedral, up to after the year 415; when, the body of St. Stephen being found, some of his Relics were brought to Limoges, as below at no. 11 will appear; whence arose an occasion of a new Cathedral to be dedicated under his name.

[3] Similarly also the oratory of the suburban cemetery, where St. Martialis lay entombed and his first successors, was turned into the basilica called St. Martialis, after his tomb there, more becomingly adorned, began to be frequented, and to be illustrated by miracles; It received a Basilica and a Monastery. or at least after some restoration of that same church, made in the 7th century. For an indication of this matter is given by St. Eligius, placing some Relics of St. Martialis at Paris, around the middle of that century, as above in the miracles at no. 33. Then also there were instituted Canons, just as in the church of St. Stephen: of both certainly we find mention in the time of King Pepin, in that Chronicle which Ademar, Monk of St. Eparchius at Angoulême, near Limoges, wrote in the 11th century, In both places Canons were instituted in the 7th century and Labbe inserted in the manuscript [in] vol. 2 of his Library; where on p. 157 it is said, that the King in his third-to-last year, which was of Christ 765, making his fourth journey into Aquitaine, conferred upon St. Martialis a golden banner, which he had taken in the battle against Waifer, Duke of Aquitaine, rebelling against him; and at the same time gave the villa of St. Vallier to the Canons of St. Martialis; and to the Canons of St. Stephen he gave the villa which is called Salagnac.

[4] at one time joined into one College: The same Labbe in the same volume, from p. 279, published another Chronicle, by the author Gaufrid, monk of St. Martialis, afterward Prior of Vosie, where in ch. 59, p. 312, it is read thus: In the days of old, one Congregation of Canons together possessed the prerogative of the churches of St. Stephen and of holy Martialis: and the Congregation which dwelt at St. Martialis, on the eve of the Lord's Nativity, descending to St. Stephen's, presided over that same church up to the Vigil of Bl. John the Baptist. Likewise the Convent of St. Stephen ascended to St. Martialis, serving that same Apostle up to the Vigil of the same Forerunner. And when these went out from St. Martialis, and the others from St. Stephen, the bells of both churches were rung, until these entered that church, and those the other. But when the Canons of St. Martialis, with the counsel of King Charles the Bald, became Monks, they divided with the Canons of St. Stephen the ancient possessions.

[5] But before this was done, the father of Charles the Bald, and son of the Great Charlemagne, Louis, surnamed the Pious, who, after dedicating the Royal monastery, who in the year 814, his father being dead, received the kingdom; built the monastery of Martialis of St. Salvator of Limoges, namely with royal amplitude, so that it is everywhere called the Royal basilica, and is found named by both names, or by either. The aforesaid words are suggested by the short Chronicle of Limoges, proceeding up to the year 1037, and similarly published by the same Labbe, p. 332. But the time of the work completed and dedicated Ademar thus further indicates, p. 159, having first narrated certain deeds of the year 829, in the year 829, and the Norman incursion of the following year into Aquitaine; "Then," he says (but the error must be corrected and it should be read "two years after," namely in the year 832) "Louis held a general Convention at the Palace of Jogentiac in the Limousin, and with great glory bade to be dedicated the royal Basilica of the Savior in the month of October; and the body of St. Martialis being raised … in the same month was placed behind the altar of the Savior at the crypt of the greater glass-window (or as Bernard Gui reads of the greater vault), the Emperor himself being present."

[6] and that Louis was captured by his sons, Then also there was a most harsh winter, and the Emperor, returned to France, after a little time (namely in the year 833, around June 24) was captured by treachery by his three sons, the Kings Lothair, Louis, and Pepin; and by Lothair was sent to prison at St. Médard; then at St. Denis… and while a little afterward Lothair tarried long at Vienne, the Franks gathered, ejected Louis from the custody of the prison beside the hall of St. Denis, and unwilling raised him again into King (March 1 in the year 834): and from that day, on which the body of St. Martialis was placed, where above, in the Basilica of the Savior; up to that day, on which the Emperor was restored to the kingdom, mid-Lent (rather, the 2nd Sunday of Lent) after the most harsh winter, they restored the Saint's body to its place, incessantly the deluges of waters and excessive rains increased: from the very day of his restoration serenity in France was restored: but in Aquitaine the rains did not fail, until the body of Bl. Martialis was again restored to its former tomb. That this was pleasing to God, appeared in the next year, 835; when (as the aforesaid Chronicle of Limoges has it) there was a miracle of Bl. Martialis at Mont-Joie.

[7] In the thirteenth year after, a great change of affairs happened. For after the death of the Lord Louis the Emperor, says Ademar p. 161, in the eighth year, but from the Incarnation of the Lord 848, Ainard, prince of the Basilica of St. Martialis, with all the other Canons, God inspiring, throw down their secular arms, and from the Canonical habit into the habit of Monks change themselves in that same monastery. For Charles the Bald held his general Convention then at Limoges, and in the year 848 those who were Canons became monks. in the time of Lent, with the Bishops of Aquitaine and its Nobles. Furthermore, Charles the Bald sitting on the Royal throne, Ainard and all the Canons of St. Martialis prostrated themselves suddenly at his feet, asking that he would give them license to become Monks in that same place. The King indeed, giving thanks to God, with great joy fulfilled their petition, and inclined all the Bishops and Nobles to their petition. But Stodilus, Bishop of Limoges, when he bore this grievously, and alone remained inflexible; at last, the King compelling, consented, overcome by gifts; and the Canons from among themselves did not wish to have an Abbot at present, but set over themselves Odo (or Dodo), Abbot of St. Savin. In the short Chronicle the year fell out for the describer, but the matter itself is noted, and is said to have been done on the day before the Kalends of April, that is, on the day before the Sunday in Albis Low Sunday: for the Easter of that year was celebrated on March 25. Furthermore (as Ademar continues) the Monks of St. Martin of Tours, no one compelling, before his body, casting off the Monk's habit, put on the Canonical habit, this being confirmed by oaths upon the body of Bl. Martin; and refreshed with meats, soon seized by a pestilence, when morning came were all found dead in their beds, from the greater to the lesser; and for the rest the place itself is held by Canons.

[8] From that change of habit, the same Ademar begins another little Commentary, From the indicated change some Abbots are reviewed also published by Labbe, p. 271, under the title, Commemoration of the Abbots of St. Martialis; where he corrects some errors of his Chronicle; and, what there he had not done, defines the span of years for each Abbot. And first indeed, to Dodo he attributes 3 years; to the second, Abbo, 11; and to his 5th year he ascribes the anointing of Charles the Bald (rather, of his son Charles) as King, namely of Aquitaine, done at Limoges in the year 855: he attributes further to the third Abbot, Benedict, 11 years; to the fourth, Gonsindus, 18; to the fifth, Fulbert, 6; but in his 5th year, as is there written, under Abbot Stephen, the Frank Charles the Simple being ejected, King Odo died; and Charles the Minor, or the Simple, recovered the kingdom. It is necessary therefore that the sixth and last year of this Fulbert be ascribed to the following year of Christ 899. Proceeding hence further to the death of Fulbert, the second of that name, the 6th Abbot, after 20 years of rule; you will find that it happened in the year 919; and hence that Stephen, the 7th Abbot, being elected, died after he had presided 17 years, in the year 936. In his time the Nobles of the Franks, by the testimony of Ademar

in the Chronicle p. 164, conspiring again against Charles the Minor (so the Simple this man was wont to name) make Robert, Duke of the Franks, King in his stead, against his will… But Charles with a strong band of friends came to Limoges; they receive Robert as King in the year 922, and, vigilant by night near the window of St. Martialis, persisted in prayers; as many as he could of the strongest warriors of Aquitaine he led with him, and through Burgundy to Otto the Emperor he went, for help. But the Franks were divided among themselves; yet the greater part favored Robert. Charles at last, aid being summoned from Otto, with a great army, and the latter being slain partly of the Teutonic nation, partly of Aquitaine and France, returned to France: and Robert joined battle with him in the year 923. Charles's standard-bearer was Count Fulbert: but Robert himself carried his own banner, his beard down, full of gray hair, outside his cuirass. Fulbert pierced King Robert through, splitting his head down the middle, and Robert's army was conquered.

[9] the victor King Charles offers spoils to St. Martialis. And the battle being finished, Hugh, son of Robert, surnamed Capet, came up, with a thousand horsemen, and put to flight Charles with his weary army: and afterward coming humbly to him, he assented to the King's will. For Charles recovered the kingdom, and to Hugh Capet himself permitted the Duchy, just as his father Robert had been wont to rule. But afterward of the spoils which Charles had taken, to St. Martialis, as he had vowed, he directed certain things; that is, from the chapel of King Robert a Gospel-book of gold and silver, a precious Dalmatic of silk garment, a silvered faldstool, two books of divine history, a precious book of computation, one banner of gold-woven cloth.

[10] Likewise Stephen (as in the Commemoration of the Abbots the same Ademar writes) composed upon the altar of St. Salvator a church (that is, a shrine in the form of a church) of gold and gems and silver: Stephen builds Stenopolis. and made two towers in the castle of Martialis, one against the Scutarii, by name Orgoleta; the other against the Sands Arenae, by name Fustivia; King Charles the Minor ordering this, to repel William, Duke of Poitiers, the Count; and from his own name he named that very castle Stenopolis, as if the city of Stephen, in that dialect, namely, in which Stephen to the Franks is "Estien." But Stephen the Abbot died on the 18th before the Kalends of December, 936; and to him was substituted Aymo, the great-great-uncle of Ademar our Chronographer himself; who says that he and Turpio, and in the year 936 Aymo succeeds him. the Bishop of Limoges, brothers, had a niece, named Officia, from whom, the father being Fulcherius, was born, after two brothers Adalbert and Rotgerius, Raymund, of whom I, says Ademar, was the son, my mother being Hildegarde. Aymo presided as Abbot six years, and died on the Nones of May, of the year certainly 942. He was succeeded, if not as Abbot, at least by such a title, by Aimeric; whose tenth year, in which the monastery is there noted to have burned, concurs, according to the aforesaid computation, with the year of Christ 952; to which by others also constantly and uniformly is ascribed the same fire, of which presently; so that a more certain reckoning up to this point cannot be wished, although in the Sammarthani Stephen is read to have died and Aymo to have succeeded in the year 919, from an error soon to be indicated.

§. II. The fortune of the Abbey of St. Martialis from the year 935 to 1023. The body several times carried about.

[11] He who succeeded Aymo, Aimeric, in the Chronicle p. 167 is named successor of Gonsindus, not rightly. For Gonsindus was the fourth Abbot, but Aimeric is placed in the ninth place; as may be seen in the Commemoration of Abbots, p. 271 and following. But rightly in the Chronicle it follows, that Aimeric, Abbot of St. Martialis, Aimeric, Abbot in name only for 31 years, not a Monk, yet at the end became a Monk; because King Louis, fourth of this name, surnamed Transmarinus d'Outremer, fearing his tyranny, had committed to him the honor of St. Martialis, oaths being received that he would be he treats. But in the Commemoration thus he describes him: After Aymo the Abbot, the Abbey was vacant 31 years, without a Pastor, that is, up to the 73rd or 74th year of the tenth century, as the Sammarthani rightly state; yet not rightly thinking that the vacancy of so many years must be placed before the nomination of Aimeric, and therefore drawing back enormously the beginnings of Aymo, and of certain others preceding, against the express mind of him whom yet they profess to follow, Ademar; who has already above sufficiently explained himself by the years reckoned, and here again more expressly signifies in what sense he says the Abbey was vacant, when he adds: For him who for so many years, that is 31, only presided, but did not profit; I do not wish to place in the Catalogue of Abbots, since this would be unjust. For by no means in a Monastic habit, but in a Canonical, nay in a Laical, for so many years held the principate of the place, an Abbot in name only. Who wishes to know his name, he was called Aimeric.

[12] In his tenth year (the short Chronicle of Limoges notes the year of Christ 952) the Monastery of St. Martialis by divine judgment was burned with fire in which, [under whom in the year 952 the monastery burned down: as the same short Chronicle says, the holy altars were broken, and many ornaments perished.] This man did not fear to give all the land of this monastery and the churches both to his kinsmen and to the other secular powers. This man, on the third day before his death, put on the habit of a Monk, but he himself being passed over fearing perjury, which to King Clothar (better, above, he named Louis, who lived up to the year 954, leaving Clothar his son thirteen years old) the habit, I say, of a Monk he put on, fearing perjury, which to King Louis in France he had pledged, when by him he was made Abbot, and Clothar was still a year old. For he swore to the King that he would become a Monk: but a mocker of God, up to his death he deferred it: who, unless the crime of his presumption should blot him out, would be written the ninth Abbot.

[13] The ninth therefore, Aimeric being passed over, is written Guigo, the ninth Abbot is called Guigo; who no doubt found discipline, under such a one, not an Abbot, but rather a secular man, vehemently dissolute, which also could be the cause of the fire, twenty years before divinely permitted; as also of the other, under Guigo following; because he, since he was Abbot of St. Eparchius of Angoulême, was content in the Abbey of St. Martialis commended to him to set up a Vicar for himself: from which neglect it could have happened, that under his principate the golden crypt of St. Martialis, under whom the crypt was burned: which had escaped the violence of the former fire, was burned, in the month of June, and indeed before the festivity of St. Martialis: and no doubt then also the holy body would have been consumed, if it had not been restored to its old tomb, as above was said at no. 6. This event, thus summarily related in the Short Chronicle, Ademar in the Commemoration of Abbots says happened, in the middle of the night, one candle falling, less than extinguished, among then by the fire were corrupted, and whatever within that house was which could burn, was consumed by the flames: the books burned, the gold and silver melted: and within fifteen days, the golden crypt with its gems anew was restored by Josbert, keeper of the tomb, a Monk. The same Josbert made a golden image of St. Martialis the Apostle, sitting upon the altar and with his right hand blessing the people, with his left holding a book of the Gospel. All which things indicate even then the immense opulence of the church.

[14] and the succession of the Carolingians being extinguished, In the 12th year of Abbot Guigo, of Christ 986, King Clothar came to Limoges, and ordered the Abbot to build the walls of the Castle: who, returned to France, after a few days died, on March 2; and his offspring, that is, the family of the Carolingians thereafter was deprived of the kingdom, the brother of Clothar, Charles, being excluded, who, an exile at Maastricht on the Meuse, died in the year 1001. Meanwhile the kingdom Hugh Capet claimed for himself: and in the year 991 Josfrid the Abbot succeeded Guigo. Around these times the Bishop of Limoges, Aldegerius, the Saint's treasury is plundered by the Bishop: son of Gerald the Viscount of Limoges, with the more precious priestly ornaments from the hall of St. Martialis, went off into France, and there was deprived of life in the year 992; he was buried at St. Denis; and for his burial he offered the precious ornaments which from St. Martialis he had carried off: and the Pontiff Alduin his brother succeeded. The vengeance for so great iniquity was not long deferred by God, tolerated by the Nobles and the people. the inhabitants are punished for tolerating this crime by the holy fire, For at the same times, says the same Ademar, the pestilence of fire blazed up upon the people of Limoges: for the bodies of men and women beyond number by an invisible fire were fed upon, and everywhere lamentation filled the land. (Elsewhere he says, that there died more than forty thousand men.) Josfrid therefore the Abbot and Alduin the Bishop, counsel being taken with Duke William, proclaim a three-day fast. Then all the Bishops of Aquitaine in one place at Limoges were gathered together; the Bodies also and Relics of the Saints from everywhere solemnly were brought; which, the shrine being carried about, is quenched. and the body of St. Martialis, Patron of Gaul, was lifted from the tomb: whence with joy immense all were filled, and every infirmity everywhere ceased, and a pact of peace and justice by the Dukes and Princes was mutually federated.

[15] This is without doubt that translation of St. Martialis, which Bosquet writes was made in the year 994, and the miracles following which we desire; but it is called the second with respect to the former, made in the year 832. Of that one we have a memory among the Miracles of the last collection, no. 36, where it is said (which also the Sammarthani have) that the sacred body was then carried to a mountain, which from then on was called Mont-Joie: but this nomenclature, a whole century and a half Abbot Josfrid repairs the shrine, earlier employed, we find in the Chronicle of Limoges. He mentions again this Translation or carrying-off, and indeed as made to Mont-Joie, the same Ademar in the Commemoration of Abbots, and adds, that thence on the day before the Nones of December, to its tomb they restored the holy body; and that the aforesaid Josfrid, from the golden image made a golden coffer with gems, in which then was carried the body of St. Martialis.

[16] But the aforesaid Duke William (when, Josfrid being dead, to the Abbot succeeded in the year 998 Adalbald, a man of regular merit) as he was in giving most liberal, defender of the poor, father of Monks, builder and lover of churches … gave to the monastery of Limoges of Bl. Martialis a church in the district of Aulnay, under Abbot Adalbald Duke William [does well;] which his father had given to the same monastery before, namely Anesius, which is in honor of Bl. Peter. It was the custom of the same Duke, that always every year he hastened to the threshold of the Apostles at Rome, and in the year in which he did not hasten to Rome, to St. James of Galicia he made up the devout journey. In the year therefore 1010 or the following, with him hastened to Rome before Lent also Alduin the Bishop; ill, Bishop Alduin in 1010 [does to the churches.] and having received the more precious

ornaments and vestments of St. Martialis, and a great affluence of silver, because he had in his hand the Abbey bought from Wido, in great sadness he left the Monks. But soon, he withdrawing, very many miracles began to flash forth at the tomb of Bl. Martialis, which brought full joy to the Monks and to all Aquitaine: for the noblest of the Aquitanians, and of the Princes of the Franks and of the Italians, in that year at Limoges Easter with To the same miracles also can be ascribed, that Adalbald the Abbot, as the Sammarthani write, recovered the Basilica of St. Martialis. Namely the Bishop Alduin, returned from Rome, after he had disposed the Basilica of the See of St. Stephen to be destroyed and amplified, and had laid lines for the foundations, that after 15 days he might press on with the work; going thence to the church of Agen, whence he had driven out the Monks, breathed out his spirit, about to render to God an account for the despoiled church of St. Martialis.

[17] Adalbald (the Sammarthani name Adebert) having died about the year 1012, Josfrid II extorts the restitution of what was taken away, succeeded Josfrid, the second of this name, brother of Hilduin the Bishop and of Wido the Viscount, but uncle of Giraldus the Bishop. This man, summoning Count Boso with a great military band, going by night to Montana, the body of St. Vallier from the church, which the inhabitants, the Princes, were taking away from St. Martialis, carried with him to Limoges, where so long he held the Relics of that same Confessor at Mont-Joie, until the Princes acknowledged the misdeed, and exhibited restitution to St. Martialis. And so the possession, not without great redemption, being recovered, the holy body was restored to the aforesaid place, and in the presence of Duke William and of Bishop Giraldus, monastic discipline there was ordained. Concerning this Saint Vallier we treated on January 10, the body of St. Vallier being taken away, but to his own harm. where his devotion toward St. Martialis is commended, and what further notice of him is there sought, can hence be augmented. But this violence did not please God: and therefore he permitted; that, when in the same days the Viscountess of Limoges, Emma, around the festivity of the Apostles and of St. Martialis, had gone to pray to St. Michael at the Hermitage, and there by the Normans by night was taken captive; for her redemption were given from the treasures of St. Martialis infinite weights of silver and gold.

[18] Nevertheless the same Josfrid the Abbot began to renew the royal Basilica of St. Salvator, or Martialis, with a greater work; In the year 1017 a great concourse occurs at St. Martialis, and so great a confluence to it was in the year 1017, and the following, that in mid-Lent, at the nocturnal Vigils, a multitude of people, in that same basilica, to the tomb of Bl. Martialis entering, men with women more than fifty, trodden upon one another, within the church expired, and on the next day were buried. The Chronicle of Limoges notes the Lord's day of mid-Lent, which then (since the year up to the following Easter was extended for the Aquitanians and Franks) was March 8. About the same year, in the Basilica of Angeac, in a stone case, towered in the manner of a pyramid, was found the head of St. John … which holy head they say is the proper head of St. John the Baptist… And while what was found was being shown, and soon to Angeac, to the head of John the Baptist found there, all Gaul, Italy, and Spain in rivalry hastened to run thither… Amid these festivities the Relics of the body of the highest Prince, who is the Father of the Aquitanians and the first Sower of the word Spermologus of the Gauls, namely Bl. Apostle Martialis, together with the Relics of St. Stephen of the See of Limoges, were carried thither. The pledges relics of St. Martialis therefore being brought forth, wherefore his body is carried thither in a carriage of gold and gems, outside its own basilica, soon all Aquitaine, which now too long had labored under inundations of rains, by the arrival of its Father rejoices, serenity being restored.

[19] and on the return it shines with miracles. With those same pledges indeed Abbot Josfrid and Bishop Giraldus, with numerous Princes and all the innumerable people, turned aside, going to the Basilica of the Savior of St. Cybard; and the Monks with all the populace went out to meet them outside, one mile: and with honorific apparatus, keeping a feast-day, Antiphons finally intoning with a high voice, they led them up to the altar of St. Salvator; and Mass being celebrated, in a like manner they escorted them. And when into the basilica of the holy Forerunner they entered, Bishop Giraldus celebrated before the Head of St. John, of the Nativity of that same holy Baptist, although it was the month of October. But the Canons of St. Stephen with the Monks of St. Martialis alternately sang tropes and praises in festive manner. And after the Mass the Bishop with the head of St. John blessed the people. And so, of the miracles of St. Martialis, which on the way happened, greatly rejoicing, on the fifth day before the festivity of all the Saints, they returned. Not long after, Josfrid having died, as the Sammarthani have, Hugh succeeded; Hugh the Abbot succeeds, but Bishop Giraldus resisted that consecration be given to him, for the cause of zeal, because he could not claim the Abbey for himself, but afterward assented; and soon at St. Cybard, having fallen sick, he died on the 3rd before the Ides of November.

[20] under whom the Bishop Jordan was elected, But after the death of the aforesaid Giraldus the Bishop (that we may pursue the history with Ademar) the Princes of Limoges contended for the Bishopric, trying with the Simoniac heresy to claim the Pontificate. Then the people of the city performed Litanies, with the Monks and Canons, on this account: and the most prudent Duke, with his counselor William, Count of Angoulême, at St. Junien held a tribunal for this cause. There was present Wido the Viscount and all the Princes of Limoges. There by the nod of God is elected to the honor of the Bishopric Jordan, of the church of St. Leonard, a man of great nobility and simplicity: and rising in the morning from the monastery of St. Junien, with two Bishops, Islo and Isembert, and a multitude of Princes, the Duke came to the city around the sixth hour. To whom to meet went forth all the city rejoicing: he is consecrated at St. Martialis, and soon he hastens to the royal basilica, received by the Monks, clad in white vestments and silk copes, with the text of the holy Gospels and a censer, candlesticks too and holy water, just as the Duke himself is always wont to be received by them. Thence at the tomb of St. Martialis he heard Mass, and beside that monastery on that day royally was lodged. On the next day he ordered the beard of the Elect to be blessed, and shaved off, and so to the See of St. Martialis in the hall of St. Stephen he led Jordan, and with the Pastoral staff there he freely invested him with the Pontifical honor; and it was the end of the month of January: and he returned to Poitiers, in the year for us 1021.

[21] In the year 1022 two Monks of St. Martialis were of the foremost, conspicuous in religion, distinguished in sanctity, and in the year 1022 there die there two learned Monks, shining in wisdom, exalted in the priesthood, who loved each other before all, and sustained the whole monastery like two columns, and even like two candlesticks gave light, and beside each other at the table sat, Rotgerius the Cantor … and Æmanus. These on the holy day of Easter (April 3) both saw by a vision themselves called by Christ; and in that very week a praiseworthy end of life they received, and a third with the said Abbot, seized by a brief, but sharp languor. A third Monk, approvable in sanctity, Fulcherius; and soon Abbot Hugh, most strong in love of God, followed them to the heavenly kingdoms. This is that Hugh, who (as elsewhere the same Ademar says) in France held a conference with King Robert, and the Archbishop of Bourges Gausleno, and with many Bishops and wise men of France, about the Apostleship of St. Martialis; why some seemed to hold him in the number of the Apostles, others in that of the Confessors. Those who in the number of Confessors held him, did this for this reason, because they did not think there were any Apostles, besides the twelve: but others did this, because his name they did not find in the four Gospels: but those who with sounder counsel had understood, affirmed him to be one chief Apostle after the twelve, because he conversed with the twelve, under whom the question of the Apostleship of St. Martialis was agitated. and the same grace of Apostleship, which they also, from the Lord he deserved to receive. In which Council by all it was defined, that he ought not to be numbered except in the Catalogue of the Apostles, just as also John the Evangelist, who departed in peace… This man, returning from France, soon, as he learned the truth in the Council, wrote Martialis in the Litanies among the Apostles, trusting not in his own disputation, but in ancient testimonies; and thereafter wholly and not in part, Martialis was acclaimed an Apostle by all the Catholics. But Abbot Hugh died on the 6th before the Kalends of June in his sixth year. So Ademar, here ending the Commemoration of Abbots.

§. III. The dedication, by Urban II, of the new Basilica, completed under Abbot Odolric.

[22] The death of Abbot Hugh being narrated, Ademar proceeds, in the Chronicle, saying that there succeeds Abbot Odolric, distinguished in prudence, whom Bishop Jordan consecrated: Odolric Abbot in the year 1023: in which days, in the month of January, around the sixth hour, an eclipse of the sun happened for one hour. Calvisius calculated this eclipse for the year 1023: and it happened, he says, on January 24, on the 5th feria Thursday, 49 minutes before noon; and not at Easter, as Sigebert has it, since indeed Easter is celebrated at the full moon. Gaufrid narrates in the Chronicle soon to be praised, ch. 16, p. 287, that in the times of this Abbot Odolric, when there was intention that the new basilica, begun ever since the year 1017, as we said, under him the structure of the new Basilica should be completed to its end; a certain man simple in act, Simplicius by name, is said to have brought the stone of the principal altar from the city of Narbonne: which stone, of precious whitest marble, which is called Lios (Greek perhaps, for "Leios" in Greek is smooth, polished), by its beauty brings to those beholding much admiration. Then it was announced to the Soldiers of Capdenac, that the stone could not pass by another route. Which heard, the Prince of the castle not only destroyed the walls, but for conducting the wagon over the land, it is advanced with a great miracle, accommodated oxen: and afterward deferred to build the walls, saying, that for a wall he always had the help of Bl. Martialis: whose hope pure faith did not deceive. And when they had come to a certain valley, so steep, that many pairs of oxen added could not move the cart; Simplicius, presuming on the virtue of the Apostle, with only two cows drawing, drew the huge stone from that immense precipice, by common report we have learned. But Simplicius having died, the stone remained outside under the open sky, up to the times of Abbot Ademar, who how he at last applied it to the work, for which it was divinely prepared, will be said below. I return to Ademar, p. 184:

[23] and with an increase of possessions: In the year 1028 Odolric, Abbot of St. Martialis, of most vigilant honesty, came to Angoulême to Count Alduin; and he himself then gave to St. Martialis the church of St. Mary in the territory of Bordeaux, with the great island of Dordogne, on which it is situated, and that island or church is distant more than one mile from the castle of Fronsac… But the father of Alduin, William, returned from Jerusalem, to many nobles, middling persons, and poor, was a good incitement. For forthwith

Isembert the Bishop of Poitiers, and Jordan the Bishop of Limoges, and Count Fulk, and several of the Nobles, and an infinite multitude of middling persons, poor, and rich, set out for Jerusalem. Thus far Ademar in the Chronicle, I know not whether toward the end it is sufficiently entire: for how would he have omitted to narrate, what in this very year, done before the departure of the aforesaid, Gaufrid thus narrates, from a Monk of St. Martialis of Limoges become Prior of the monastery of Vosie, in that Chronicle which, from King Robert up to the year 1184, Labbe published, in the same volume as the Chronicle of Ademar, from p. 305.

[24] but it is itself consecrated The Lord Jordan de Laron, Bishop of Limoges, before he set out for Jerusalem, consecrated the monastery of Arnac, in which reposes the body of the gracious Pardulf, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1028, on the day before the Ides of July, then a Sunday: and in that same year was consecrated the royal basilica of the Savior of Limoges, on the 15th before the Kalends of December, likewise on a Sunday, the letter F then running as Dominical letter, by eleven Bishops, whose names this page contains: Godfrid, Archbishop of Bordeaux; Jordan, of Limoges; Isembert, of Poitiers; Roho, of Angoulême; Arnald, of Périgueux; Peter, of Gerona; Deusdedit, of Cahors; Amelius, of Albi; Arnald, of Rodez; Fulk, of Carcassonne; Isbus, of Saintes. This was done in the time of Robert King of the Franks, Constantine Emperor of the Greeks, and the holy body is restored on November 24. and Conrad Emperor of the Romans. Then also the body of St. Martialis the Apostle was raised by his Monks: to whose presence were brought then many most noble bodies of the Saints of the Province of Aquitaine, the Duke of Aquitaine standing by, the Duke of Gascony, with all the Princes, and with all the throng of the Aquitanians. After eight days, again restored and returned, the whole body of that same Apostle, into its former tomb.

[25] Furthermore the Chronicle of Limoges, in the other of the codices which Labbe used, the monastery burns down in 1052 and 1060 ends with the twin calamity of the monastery, which followed not so many years after this dedication: in these words, In 1052 the Monastery of St. Martialis was burned with fire, and the whole castle together with three Monks killed, in which fire books, hangings, very many charters of lands, perished. And, In 1060, on the 11th before the Kalends of May, the same monastery was burned on the 6th feria Friday; and the castle within and without. under the Abbots Peter and Mainard. Each calamity followed the death of Odolric the Abbot, which had happened in the year 1040, on the 5th before the Kalends of October; in the rule succeeding Peter, who built the gate, called "de Mommilier," as it is in the old Catalogue in the Sammarthani; and Mainard, who lived up to the year 1064, memorable for nothing, except either or each misfortune, perhaps sent on account of relaxed discipline. How a remedy was applied to this relaxation in the third year after (for so in one of the copies of Gaufrid Labbe reads, while in the other, the matter is noted ten years earlier, by the omission of one X) thus further I find explained.

[26] In the year 1063, on the Nones of August, the Cluniacs invaded the place of St. Martialis, In the year 1063 the Cluniac reform is introduced. through the fraud of Ademar son of Wido, Viscount of Limoges, and of Peter Escausarius, who for this gave to that same Viscount an excellent horse, which was called Millescus. Nevertheless there for very many days the discipline of the monastery was reformed, and with new flowers of honesty the Abbey adorned, under Abbot Ademar, who was of Limoges, of equestrian lineage, and undertook the Abbey to be ruled in the year 1064 (probably brought from Cluny), and it above the rest in religion and abundance of temporal things wonderfully enlarged and adorned, as is read in the Sammarthani. The damages therefore of the aforesaid fires he repaired; and when the Canons of St. Stephen, desiring altogether to acquire the stone, about 70 years before miraculously brought by the Monk Simplicius for the Major altar, and left outside, had persuaded the Count, the new altar is consecrated. that on the following day the stone should be given to him by the Abbot, with whom he was to have a certain tribunal; and that this was reported to the Abbot; Matthew the mason being summoned, the father of Matthew of Uzerche, who perhaps then was present, on that night with lights, the former being removed, they built a new altar. And then the solemnity of the Dedication was deferred: which being known, the Count and the Canons from their purpose desisted.

[27] In the year of the Lord 1094, again the plague of the subcutaneous fire most atrociously was scorching the Aquitanian people. in 1094 the Saint is invoked against the holy fire, These as quickly as possible fleeing to their own Patron, deserved to receive help from the Saint. For from all the Limousin to the most holy Martialis were brought the bodies of the Saints, the throngs of peoples and Princes flowing together from everywhere… In the year of the Lord 1095 Urban Pope II… for the cause of public preaching sought the Gallic shores, provoking the people of the West, that they might bring help to the sons of the East. The Assumption of St. Mary at Le Puy he performed: the monastery of St. Robert of Chaise-Dieu… on the 15th before the Kalends of September he consecrated: on the feast of St. Thomas, Urban II visits the same, at Uzerche he was lodged; on the 10th before the Kalends of January he came to Limoges: the Mass of the Cockcrow in the Lord's Nativity in the church of the maidens of St. Mary, which is called "ad Regulam," he sang: the Mass of the Light in the Royal basilica at St. Martialis he celebrated: thence triumphally crowned, he returned to the Episcopal Apostolic See, where he performed the rest of the Offices of the solemnity. On the next day, which is after the feast of the Innocents, the Cathedral church in honor of the Protomartyr Stephen he dedicated: on the following day then a Sunday he rested: on the day before the Kalends of January, the Royal basilica, in honor of the Savior of the world he consecrated, and its ancient liberty and noble prerogative with new privileges he strengthened.

[28] How and with whom present this was done, briefly describes Gaufrid ch. 27; and he celebrates a Council at Limoges, but from the archive of Limoges an insertion to this chapter Labbe appends, by which the series of the matter is more fully thus described: In the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1095, in the 3rd Indiction, in the times of Philip King of the Franks, William Duke of the Aquitanians, Humbald too, Bishop of the people of Limoges, and the Lord Ademar, Abbot of the monastery of St. Martialis, there was made a very great Convention in the city of Limoges, of diverse order, of both sexes and ages. This noble and chief Convention was presided over by the Lord Urban, the Apostolic Pontiff of the holy Roman Church, with Archbishops and Bishops and Abbots accompanying him, who at that time from the parts of Italy into Gaul had come, in aid of the East, for diverse usefulnesses of the Church of God, and the state of the right faith, and the greatest affairs of the Christian religion: but the chief cause of his coming was, that the Church of Christ and the people of the East, invaded by the perfidious nation of the Saracens and exceedingly afflicted, under a grievous persecution remained… When therefore for the sake of this matter he was traversing the Gauls, on the 10th before the Kalends of January he came into this city of Limoges: and there were present with him most excellent and most religious men, Archbishops and very many Bishops, whose these are the names: Lord Hugh, Archbishop of Lyon; Lord Audebert, Archbishop of Bourges; Lord Amatus, Archbishop of Bordeaux; Lord Dagbert, Archbishop of Pisa; Lord Rangerius, Archbishop of Reggio; Bruno too, Bishop of Segni; the Bishop too of Poitiers Peter, the Bishop too of Saintes Arnulf, the Bishop too of Périgueux Raynald, the Bishop too of Rodez Raymund, and Humbald Bishop of Limoges.

[29] then he dedicates the new basilica, All these with him celebrated the Nativity of Christ: and on the very day of the Nativity, at daybreak with all those he went up to the church of the Lord Martialis; and upon the altar of St. Salvator the Mass of the Light he sang: and after a sermon delivered to the people, crowned, to the See of St. Stephen he returned. But on the sixth day of the Nativity, which was a Sunday, again to the monastery of St. Martialis he came: and there remaining eight days, with the aforesaid Archbishops and Bishops, the Royal basilica, which Louis the Emperor of divine memory, son of Charlemagne, had built from the foundations; but afterward both by conflagration of fire and by various accidents shattered, by the Lord Ademar, then Abbot of that place, within and without to the full reformed and adorned it was, with Apostolic authority he solemnly dedicated, on the second [day] before the Kalends of January. And he himself indeed blessed the Water; but the Archbishops within and without the basilica with that Water traversed. and he himself consecrates the high altar: Then the Lord Pope himself with his own hands the altar of the Lord Savior with blessed Water washed, with Chrism and holy Oil anointed, the pledges of the Saints there deposited, and soon on that altar sang Mass, an innumerable multitude of people standing by; and in perpetuity ordained that day to be kept solemn and celebrated as the Dedication. These things there: Gaufrid adds: Thence to bless the peoples he went forth in public; of whom so great was the multitude there, that in the circuit of the city, within one mile, nothing but the heads of men were seen: but of offerings so great an abundance flowed, that the shrine of the Apostolic tomb, which commonly was called "Gauteau," besides the others, overflowed full.

[30] Then Humbald, the Bishop of Limoges, is accused by his adversaries, convicted, Humbald the Bishop being deposed, William substitutes him, and at St. Martialis, in the sight of Abbot Ademar, against whose opposition he had been elected, by the Lord Pope is publicly deposed… Therefore Humbald being deposed, William, Prior of the monastery of St. Martialis, is made Bishop, but not at once… At the same time, the said Pope Urban solemnly invested the church of St. Martialis, and its Abbot Ademar, with the church of St. Peter of Montandre, and with the churches of Saliomo with their appurtenances, where reposes the body of St. Martin the Abbot, once Prince of that land. and confers on the monastery the church of St. Martin the Abbot, His Life is not fully had among us, because in the Norman invasion it is said to have been taken away. Hence it can be weighed, how much he confers on the Church, who studies to describe the deeds of the Saints. For if the Acts of this Saint were had written in several churches, so great a loss the monastery of him in the loss of goods would not suffer. But now also another inconvenience accrued to this loss, perhaps of him who is commemorated on May 8 that neither does any cult of that Saint survive, the body perhaps lost or scattered by the Heretics; wherefore it must be wished that the Monks of St. Martialis, to whom that church perhaps even now pertains, search out whatever surviving memories of him, if perhaps this be he, whom Notker and others, referring [him] to May 8, confused with St. Martin Abbot of Vertou, near Nantes, whose feast is properly kept on October 24, and whose Life is had fairly copious.

§. IV. Deeds under Abbot Ademar, and his successors in the 12th century, up to 1167.

[31] Furthermore when the Bishop William, touched by zeal for God, opposed the manners of the wicked, within the third year of his Priesthood by those same men with poison was attacked, The Bishop William being dead, by the hands of a certain Martin, who was of the city of Limoges, who was surnamed "Christianus," who in this deed proved a Pagan, nay worse than a Pagan. And when the Bishop perceived himself burdened, the Abbot, though late, he sought, who to those laboring with such a plague was wont to come to aid, if they had come to him, before they had given their limbs to sleep. Why should I recall all things? the sun setting, the Bishop died. Then the Abbot a messenger directed into the city, who should say, that the Bishop made well wished the Pontifical ornaments: which being received, by the mournful ringing of the bells the death of the Bishop is declared. Yet the magnanimous Abbot,

is judged to have done this not for the sake of greed, but, that the deed done, to the ignominy of the enemies of truth, might be held more known. The body therefore of the Bishop with worthy honor, Abbot Ademar takes care of the funeral. in the basilica of the Savior of the world, is entombed, before the altar of St. Austriclinianus, about eight paces; beside whose tomb two altars, one in honor of St. James, the other in honor of St. Vincent the Levite and Martyr, were built and consecrated… But how Ademar was to come to the aid of William, endowed with the grace of expelling poison, unless that man had sought help too late, the same Gaufrid explains in ch. 37; where he narrates, how Wido, son of Ademar the Viscount … once and again attacked with poison by his stepmother, while Abbot Ademar lived, an antidote being given to him by him, twice escaped death; the Abbot being dead, in the third month by poison he perished.

[32] In the year 1101 of the Lord's Incarnation, Ademar of St. Riberius, He takes up the Abbey of Terrasson. Abbot of Terrasson … of his own accord handed over himself and the ordering of his monastery to Ademar the Abbot of St. Martialis and his successors, that he might correct the errors; and that they should have a Prior, Sacristan, Cellarer, Master of the school, from the Monks of St. Martialis… Which when the Monks made void, after the death of Bernard, surnamed the Vicar, they were deprived of every good. For before they abounded in all good things. Meanwhile to the Burghers, that is, to the inhabitants dwelling around the Abbey of St. Martialis, using the law of the city of Limoges, so had their spirits grown, that with the citizens themselves on equal terms they contended, the dwellers near St. Martialis burn the city, and by the confidence of their place sometimes with arms contended. Whence in the year 1105, on the Kalends of July, the city of Limoges was burned, by the men of the castle of St. Martialis: in which burning was consumed the mother church of St. Stephen, with all its offices, and the monastery of St. Mary likewise, and the churches of St. John the Baptist, and St. Maurice, and the Holy Trinity, and St. Genesius, and St. Domnolenus. So Labbe from the manuscript, p. 275.

[33] together with the Cathedral of St. Stephen, There perished therefore then the structure of Bishop Alduin, of which in the Chronicle Ademar says, that returned from Rome about the year 1010, the basilica of the See of St. Stephen, which he believes was dedicated by St. Martialis, deceived by the fabulous Acts, he had designed to be destroyed and amplified; but the structure interrupted by his death, and more slowly advanced, as much as was enough for sacred uses, at last in the 85th year after completed, Pope Urban had consecrated, as we saw. Bernard Gui therefore is mistaken, when in the Deeds of the Bishops of Limoges in Labbe, p. 266, he writes, that the basilica, begun by Alduin, remained unfinished more than two hundred years, namely up to the year 1223, in which the Canons of that place began magnificently to complete it, as it now is, that is, about the year 1320, in which Bernard was writing, not even here accurate in noting the year of the reparation; but marking it more correctly at the end of that same little treatise, where he says of Bishop Aymeric, that by his subsidy, on the occasion of the Anacletian schism. and in the time of a Synod, in the year of the Lord 1273 in the week of Pentecost, Elias de Malmort, a noble man, Dean of St. Stephen, and the Canons, the first stone in the foundations placed, beginning it anew and magnificently, as now is seen, to enlarge: but God afterward gave the increase. But Aymeric, having died in that year, the first "Christianus" i.e. of the name, in that church was buried, because he had left a great sum of money for the same to be completed. I would say, that after the fire of the year 1105, the remaining ruined walls were begun in some measure to be repaired, and adapted for the use of the Canons under Eustorgius the Bishop, who next succeeded the fire; and so they stood until from the foundations new ones began to be raised, 167 years after the fire. But the fire perhaps was therefore sent, because the city adhered to Anacletus the Pseudo-pope, together with Geraldus of Angoulême, the Bishop, bearing the title of Apostolic Legate; but the Burghers together with the Monks, to the true Pontiff Innocent II.

[34] Abbot Ademar most useful to his church, Their Abbot Ademar, when about the year 1113 he was sick, an Abbot of a certain monastery subject to Ademar, Peter, surnamed Abbanus, of the Castle of Malmort, sprung from equestrian stock, in the 22nd year from his ordination… Abbot Ademar coming to visit him, knew he would die; and withdrew to Arnac; until, returning at his death, he might solemnly complete the obsequies. He loved him much, because he had been most necessary to him in many affairs, especially in the Tribunal which he had concerning the Salt-works. Meanwhile, he being present, by the whole Convent is elected as Abbot Rainald de Rofiniac, who was Sacristan of St. Germain, which is called "las Verguas." This man is said to be a professed Monk of St. Martialis, like his predecessor Peter: he being elected, Abbot Ademar is reported to have said, "Good, but old." The title of Chapter 35, in which these things are narrated, he predicts the death of another, who was visiting him sick, is "Concerning the Abbots of Uzerche": by which the author of the Index to the aforesaid volumes of Labbe was deceived, and Peter and Rainald he entitled Abbots of Uzerche. For with such persons that Chapter begins, and the death of Gaubert being indicated, which occurred in the year 1108, it is said that there succeeded Peter surnamed Rechada de Turribus, for five years, that is up to 1113; then of another monastery's Abbot, also Peter, there is treatment, who sat 22 years: but the monastery's name seems to have fallen out for the transcribers.

[35] Furthermore Ademar himself, in the year from the Incarnation of the Lord 1114, in the fiftieth from his ordination, in the ninth month, and he himself dies in the year 1114. at the night-hour of St. Maurice, that is, September 22, when the Responsory was being sung, "God of Innocence," the board was struck for his departure. The body was placed on the North side, in the place where the boys sit in the Chapter. In his time the church of St. Martialis in buildings, ornaments, and revenues of lands, and, what is of more value, Bernard succeeds in honest religion flourished… Bernard, Prior of Cluny, surnamed the Fat, to Ademar the Abbot succeeds. This man for secular affairs was suitable enough, yet in the Scriptures was found less able. He having soon returned to Cluny, Pontius Abbot of Cluny according to his wish tried to elect an Abbot. The Monks on the contrary justly demanded that their own Abbot Bernard be restored to them, him being removed, Pontius of Cluny, wishing to appoint another, or another be created. Pontius sought the Pope, praying to put the church of St. Martialis under interdict: which the highest Pontiff Paschal judged unjust to be done. Pontius with his men into a certain tower withdrew, striving more quickly to complete what he was arranging: he is nearly crushed by the collapse of the house, when suddenly the upper floor of the house collapsing, crushed one Monk's leg, another's arm, Gaucelin Noam the Abbot's Chaplain being killed: the rest scarcely escaped, and knew themselves to be terrified by St. Martialis: wherefore to Limoges they swiftly came, and the church of the Apostle treated more kindly. For there was elected by the Monks of St. Martialis solemnly, Amlard Prior of Solignac: and Abbot Pontius instituted, that the people of Limoges should have a Prior from the Monks of St. Martialis, and Amlard is elected. while they had an Abbot from the Cluniacs, and conversely. These things were done in the time of Easter, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1115.

[36] In the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1122 (rather 23) the whole castle of Limoges, In the year 1123 the monastery and Church burn. the monastery of St. Martialis, the bells of the belfry, the cloisters, the offices, the church of St. Peter of the Crossroads, and St. Michael des Lions, the monastery of St. Martin outside the walls, were incredibly burned by fire. On the night following, for it was the Sabbath Saturday and the Kalends of September (when the Dominical letter G indicates the necessity of the premised correction) with great mourning was sung the History of Job, "If we have received good from the hand of God, why should we not endure evil?" Then for two years a most savage famine, with horrible mortality, so shook the people, that not only the middling, but also very many of the rich it compelled to beg… A streamlet beneath the tomb of St. Martialis burst forth so abundant, A streamlet floods under the Saint's tomb: that, unless it were cast out by the peoples, the chamber of the Apostle would be believed to be filled with water. There is made therefore through the middle of the basilica of St. Peter a channel of great stones, and so that streamlet to the rising of the sun thereafter is diverted. The vein of the fountain, which flowing from the Comba of Ferrière, by Abbot Adalbald once into the cloister was conducted, as is recorded, The aqueduct fails. at a certain time so failed, that the Monks despaired of its return. Whence by all to God through the churches was poured out prayer, until the desired water the divine bounty might restore. For also the boys publicly through the streets of the city cried out, saying: God, water: God, water: Saint Martialis, restore to us water…

[37] Lastly, (not first, as it is wrongly transcribed) Lastly, I say, in the time of Louis the Fat, The Head of St. Martialis is found, son of Philip the King, of this name the First, and so before the August of the year 1136 in which he died; and most recently (or here perhaps should it be read "first"?) of William, son of that Wido, who at Poitiers the monastery of St. John, which is called the New, built, was found the venerable Head of the Apostle Martialis, in a golden case, which stands out above the altar of the Savior, in the presence of Geraldus the Legate, Bishop of Angoulême, Eustorgius the Bishop of Limoges, and Amlard the Abbot. Yet there are not lacking, and it shines with miracles, those who say the Apostle's body is held whole in the tomb. Their opinion I would approve, unless I considered there a danger to the church. For if we say this Head not to be the Apostle's; perhaps the Relics of the Apostle, for any other Saint will be given to any who ask; and so the Royal basilica will be defrauded of its due honor little by little. Wherefore I wish to make the sons of the Church solicitous, lest their own Lord, a stranger from his own place, they make a guest, by his pledges to other churches indiscriminately bestowing. In the showing of the aforesaid Head, that it might be proved to be the Apostle's, how great prodigies of miracles were there wrought, the thousands of peoples flowing together testify. The case thereafter, golden, to the procession on Palm Sunday, as anciently was wont when greater necessity pressed, was not carried: but the shrine of St. Austriclinianus in its stead is carried…

[38] Abbot Amlard elected Bishop In the year 1137, Eustorgius, Bishop of Limoges, at St. Augustine died, on the 3rd before the Kalends of December… The Bishop being entombed, Amlard the Abbot is elected by some as Bishop: who forthwith ascended the Pontifical throne, which also harmed [him] much afterward. There was elected [for] by others Geraldus, Dean of St. Yrieix, nephew of Eustorgius: and there was made a contention between the partisans of each. Peter Laures, who on account of the church of Cayron was strong with a band of friends, he loses the case and dies. forbade the Pontifical throne to the Abbot on the part of the highest Pontiff: wherefore by Bonifacius, a client of the Abbot, wounded; the blood shed on his garment by him, as he could, to Eugenius the Pope he showed: namely in the year 1145, when by him, substituted in the place of Lucius II, at Rome the cause was decided, and to Geraldus the Bishopric adjudged. Meanwhile Amlard, disposing to go to Rome, sought Cluny, imploring their help: but in nothing aided by them, he makes the backward journey, and in the year 1143 died, on the 12th before the Kalends of September; for whom on the Exaltation of the holy Cross is elected the Lord Albert … Prior of Peyrac. But Geraldus, by the Pope himself, before holy Easter of the aforesaid year 1145, was made Priest and Bishop

is consecrated, and after these things is dismissed in peace.

[39] Under this Pontificate the said Albert forbade his Monks, Abbot Albert reforms certain things that they should abstain from all fat on the sixth feria Friday, except for the festivities which are kept in copes, the Procurator only giving oil to the Convent in place of fat… For formerly in the Advent of the Lord they used fat on the days of 12 Lessons, which was all forbidden by Albert. He himself instituted that a solemn procession be made on the festivity of all the Saints. He instituted also, urgently asked by the whole Convent, that wherever a Monk of St. Martialis should die, there should be made for him a trentenary, from all Limoges, also concerning the Masses for deceased Monks, by two Masses. For before, if a Monk should die at Arnac or Palnat, or in a place in which there were not so many Monks, who could in order complete the trentenary; only one Mass in the Convent and another each individually celebrated for the deceased Brother… But in the obediences he commands, that for all Monks dying anywhere, they make a septenary of Masses, or for seven days a provision be given to some poor person in the least houses.

[40] This Albert put off the man i.e. died, not in the year 1157 (as would follow from the reckoning of Gaufrid, and dies in the year 1156: who writes that, elected in the year 1143, he presided 16 years, ch. 50) but as the Sammarthani have; in 1156, on the 5th before the Kalends of August: but he was entombed beneath a stone, namely before the five images of the tomb, the following Peter is suddenly extinguished: at the foot of the wall of the Chapter. On the 5th day before the Ides of September, a Sunday (which concurrence confirms the year noted above), is elected Peter, Prior of Cluny … who on the Vigil of the next Christmas, after the Pardon of the Chapter, while with a mystic sermon, the spirits of the Brothers to celebrate the nativity of the Savior he was provoking, by a sudden infirmity seized, his voice wholly cut off, around cockcrow of the most sacred night, Hugh, having suffered a rival, breathed out his spirit… After this is elected Hugh de Fusa, on whom Peter the Fat, elected by some, brought great harm: but before he vexed him long, the way of all flesh he entered, pardon for his guilt being sought.

[41] He bestows on the English a particle of the Head of St. Martialis, Under this Abbot about 1163, three Canons coming from England, with letters of the Bishop of Lincoln, asked that Relics of St. Martialis be given to the monastery which is called Premonstratus locus Newhouse. This new monastery, in honor of our Apostle, was lately built by a certain Prince, and already rules over nine Abbeys. While the Procession of all the Saints was being kept, Abbot Peter on their behalf, not without tears, prays the people, that they acquiesce to their petition. The Canons, re-vested, standing at the right of the Abbot, moved the whole people with groanings. Why many words? after the Gospel, the Head of the Apostle to all of us who were present the Abbot showed; and Relics of that same Saint being taken, together with Relics of Bl. Valeria, with longing he gladdened them. To those same Canons the Abbot provided in all things, and on that day in the refectory asked them to feast with him. A case of ivory most excellent, Iterius de Crosent gave to them, in which the Relics might be stored; and Peter de Forva wax, by which up to morning they might be illuminated. After the meal by the people outside the walls with joy they were led off. This monastery had been founded under the name of the New House by Peter de Gousla, around the last years of Robert Bishop of Lincoln, who died in the year 1123.

[42] There are extant in vol. 2 of the Monasticon Anglicanum p. 58, for a certain church of his there, various charters of that foundation and endowment, and among them a Letter of Abbot Amblard, here worthy enough to be recited: for it indicates that even there the Saint shone with miracles. For where now is printed and read "us, and our"; there I altogether judge it should be read "You, and Your." Behold it. Brother Amblard, unworthy servant of St. Martialis, and the whole Convent of that place, to our most Christian Brother, the Lord Peter de Gousla, greeting and faithful prayers. Your legation being received, and your description read through, gladdened, to omnipotent God we give thanks, who his beloved most blessed Martialis, through miracles among you to glorify, and your faith and that of your neighbors through the same to confirm, deigns. received of old into participation. The Lord R. also (I believe Robert the Bishop, who died on January 10) your Brother, who first the church of Bl. Martialis built, in the Convent, like our Brother, we have absolved; and for his soul the due prayers to God, Psalms and Masses we have offered. You also, whom of old in the benefit of our church we had received, henceforth not only partakers of the benefit, but like one of us, both in life and in death, we acknowledge. All also who shall have either served or done good to your church, we grant to be partners of the benefit of our whole church. Moreover, concerning that which to the glory of Bl. Martialis and of his church you asked, for certain at present we would have satisfied [you], unless your messenger were to proceed further: for what we were to direct, or when there shall be opportunity we will direct, neither was it fitting that it be handled unbecomingly, nor carried, as through provinces. Which concerning the Relics asked for, and at last after forty or more years, under Robert II Bishop of Lincoln, sent, will be fittingly understood.

[43] On which occasion the head was separated from the body, But I know not, whether for Gaufrid, writing of these things which he had seen, the doubt indicated above was wiped away; for whom the presumed integrity of the body in the tomb, a slight foundation indeed of hesitation had given; since nothing is more usual, than from the hidden bodies of the Saints, at the time of Translation from one shrine to another, to take away the Head or a similar notable portion, or other Relics for the use of Processions and public Solemnities, nor therefore the body any the less said whole. What? that even St. Eligius, where there was treatment of the Miracles, is said to have brought something of the Relics of St. Martialis to Paris, or there, brought by another, to have found [it]. To gather the series of the rest of the Abbots from Gaufrid and others is of no concern, since it can be found in the Sammarthani, and their times contain nothing pertaining to St. Martialis, and his protection, bestowed on that his place; yet to the history of the monastery it somewhat pertains, that in the year of the Lord's Incarnation 1167, on the night which closes the day of John the Baptist, was burned the castle of Limoges, the belfry, the best bells, even the church of St. Michael de Pestaria; nevertheless the cloister, the offices, and the burg of the gardens of St. Valeria, by God's mercy, are saved.

§. V. Certain other things done at Limoges concerning the Abbots, and the treasury of St. Martialis. The cult in the territory of Siena. The Life written in Italian by Lombardelli.

[44] In the year 1182, Henry King of England visits the Body of St. Martialis. Besides the Chronicle which hitherto we have used, and which, as for the most part containing sacred matters, in the very monastery of St. Martialis, wholly or for the greater part, can seem to have been written; Gaufrid also wrote something about the wars waged in his time in the Limousin; "The Other part of the Chronicle" Labbe calls it, and it begins from the year 1182: where at once in the beginning is narrated, how both Henrys, father and son, Kings of England, peace being conciliated between the two Philips, the King of France and the Count of Flanders, withdrew into Aquitaine; where Henry the young man, coming to Limoges, is received by the Monks with dancing, Abbot Isembert dying the Clergy together with the people exulting. Then he offered to the blessed Apostle a pallium, on whose ornament is written "King Henry." And because the solemnity was at hand, the nativity of St. Martialis being celebrated, as the matter required; after dinner to St. Yrieix he came, where before in the Week of Pentecost, celebrated on May 16, the elder King… having tarried for some days, the life of St. Yrieix honestly received, and the whole of it himself read through and venerated, to be illustrated by us on August 15.

[45] About the same time it happened, that the Lord Abbot Itembert, ordained in the year 1177, the Saint being invoked, he repels the appearing demons. while he was in particular prosperity, by the clemency of divine providence ordering it, to be grievously sick, so that by all now it was despaired of his safety. And when by the very molestation of his sickness as if snatched into ecstasy he seemed, and is restored to health. and about to close his last day to render his spirit was believed; the Lord looking down from heaven, and wishing to prove his constancy in infirmity according to the Apostle; permitted him to perceive the malign visions of the malign spirits standing around. But the Lord Abbot, although now nothing was to be thought of but death, of God and his servant Martialis the Apostle, much that he was his servant professed; and rebuking and threatening said to them; Take yourselves hence, savage beasts: may the Lord crush you under our feet: I am a servant of Jesus Christ and of the most holy Martialis the Apostle, who surrounds my soul and body with the shield of salvation and protects them. Which being said, at the invocation of God and of the most glorious Apostle, the spirits fled, and the Lord Abbot was restored to health.

[46] The Nativity of the Lord being celebrated, the three sons of the King disputed among themselves: the sons of the elder King Henry warring among themselves, then there conspired against Richard Duke of Aquitaine, the second-born, Henry the King the first-born, and Gaufrid Count of Brittany the third-born: and the Purification of Bl. Mary being passed, Gaufrid the Breton came to Limoges suddenly; then the King his brother … But hearing, the King the father, that his sons labored with the most evil plague of sedition, with very few [men] came to Limoges. … The people with arms went out suddenly, and the King's army atrociously invaded… Then by the order of the Viscount the people swore, in the basilica of Bl. Peter of the Crossroads, fealty to the younger King: the burghers fortified the castle, etc. … The elder King powerfully besieged the castle of Limoges, and the whole in its circuit with a Royal fortification girded, on the Kalends of March… The King remained in the city: the elder son in the Castle, Duke Richard at St. Vallier. Then the Monks with the Clergy and people within the walls go around the whole castle, the latter coming up besieges the Younger at Limoges, carrying the relic of St. Austriclinianus, with the golden case, in which they say is enclosed the Head of St. Martialis, and other Relics of the Saints they carried; in the presence of the King the young man; beseeching God, that by their patronage he might free the people. The women also within the walls girded the whole castle with thread of tow, from which they made many candles, which to St. Martialis and the other churches they distributed…

[47] Henry did not yet possess land or treasure… who, because he knew not where to turn, straitened on every side by irremediable necessity, who for his own defense demands the treasure of Bl. Martialis to be furnished to him for the moment: which the Monks without the precept of the Abbot dared not [do], by a just answer professed: for the Lord Isembert, sedition pressing, had withdrawn… Replying all which the Prince, compelled the Monks to give the treasure; and entering the cloister, drove out all, even the young men; and certain small boys of the school at first night he kept outside… the treasure of St. Martialis, On the next day, the Monks being freed, the treasure is laid out. The table of the altar of the holy tomb, where were five images, with the table of the major altar, on which were the seats of the Majesty with the twelve Apostles of purest gold; a golden chalice, with a silver vessel, which Arnald de Montasir is said to have given; valued at money, he takes it on loan, the cross of the altar of St. Peter, with the half of the shrine of the same: the case of blessed Austriclinianus, with the great cross of Bernard the Lay-brother, of gold

fifty marks, of silver one hundred and three marks. All these things not rightly weighing nor appraising (for they were worth more) at the price of twenty-two thousand shillings they reckoned. The King promised that he would give so much, but the price of the goldsmiths and the gold which was in the gilding of the silver, were not reckoned … What shall I say? alas the grief! with grave injury to the Saint: the most sacred treasure the King gave to the ravagers of the peoples, that they might inflict longer-lasting evils on the days of Lent on the people. So unheard-of a crime certainly I would not have believed, unless with ocular faith I had beheld it being done…

[48] The Paschal solemnity (April 17 he chose) the King both kept in the city of Limoges: his son Henry held Angoulême with a multitude of evildoers… The father withdrawing, the son attacked the city of Limoges: but the guard of the walls, not with voices, but with stones thrown at him, said; We do not wish this man to reign over us… Meanwhile the boy King from the monastery of Grandmont violently took the treasure: and, what is horrible to hear, he did not spare the Dove of gold, in which the Lord's Body was held, which his father had once given. From the monastery also which is called Corona, in the district of Angoulême, and from certain churches treasures many he irreverently carried off. Shall the days of one doing such things be prolonged?… On the Ascension of the Lord at Uzerche he came: and he begins to be sick. the day now declining, the procession of the Monks he grudgingly received, because he hoped from the Abbot or the people to exact silver. He, by the just judgment of God struck, had perceived himself the day before somewhat burdened. On the next day, though sick, at Donseniac he came: on the Sabbath Saturday at the village Martel… Thence to Rocamadour the King went, bearing the appearance of a pilgrim, but there with beastly savagery he treated, how he might exact money from the Abbot of Obazine; so more about taking-away than about offering he was thinking.

[49] The Bishops gather to him: Returned to Martel the King grew sick… The most celebrated feast of Pentecost he kept without any Sacrament of the Church. William de Tignera, once Abbot of Dalon, then came to visit at Rocamadour Geraldus the Bishop of Cahors; and found Pontius de Spalas, Prior of Royas, which is of the monastery which is called the Chartreuse Charterhouse. These agreed with one another, that they would visit the King on the third feria Tuesday. The sick man, legitimately constituted, his acts before them confessed, and naked went out of bed: and so prostrate on the ground, adoring God, the life-giving mysteries he received: to his enemies and the assembly of evildoers and the paternal war he renounced … On the Sabbath Saturday at the second hour he is anointed; his sins confessing openly; the Viaticum he received; on his own shoulder he asked the Cross to be placed; God's mercy from the marrow he invoked; by whom he is fortified with the last [rites,] the help of the Virgin Mary and of all the Saints he implored: Bl. Martialis he humbly asked to come to his aid, for whose injury he was being mortally scourged…

[50] To his father he commends the restitution of what was taken away, A Letter the King dying transmitted to his father, signed with his own seal and ring, in which after the salutation was written; My sins and my ignorances remember not. In the first chapter he asks his father, to treat more indulgently his mother, whom for nearly ten years at Salisbury he had held as a captive: he begs [him] liberally to provide for his wife now a widow, as being the daughter of Louis the King of the Gauls, and granddaughter of Ferdinand King of the Spains, who like her mother is called Margaret: and meanwhile he orders his entrails to be cast before St. Martialis. he supplicates that peace be given to the people of Angoulême, of Périgueux, of Saintes, and to all enemies, especially to Ademar the Viscount and the people of Limoges: he beseeches [him] to repay the damages to the afflicted, to restore the treasures to the churches, which he had snatched, especially to St. Martialis. The body is carried to Rouen by his household, His own body to be carried through Limoges he ordered; and as if for satisfaction, his eyes, brain, belly, to be cast before the Apostle, and himself to be retained there, until all the prices of the plunderings were paid by his father. In the last Chapter he asks, that his little body at Rouen, in the basilica of the Mother of God Mary, be solemnly entombed…

[51] The King died at Martel, in the house of Stephen surnamed Fabre, in the presence of Bernard Bishop of Agen, and many other religious men, the feast of St. Barnabas the Apostle being at hand. For it was the tenth hour of the Sabbath Saturday of the great week of Pentecost, the 12th moon, in the year 1183 from the Incarnation of the Lord. On the next day passing through Brive, they came outside Uzerche. The men of Vosie, on an eminent place, which is called la Guarde, and I with certain monks and laymen, by the public road, beheld at the tenth hour the royal obsequies pass. Then Ademar the Viscount, Gaufrid de Lusignan, he being reduced to extreme poverty. and certain Soldiers come to mourn the dead man. The Abbot of Uzerche Bernard, in lights and procuration, paid the expenses. At early dawn, at the Mass for the deceased, scarcely twelve denarii were offered, which the Chaplain of the deceased snatched. Why many words? The whole household of the King labored with hunger: moreover the horse of the King, precious, for those things which had been necessary for the sick man, as a pledge they handed over: and he who the treasure of Martialis and of the other Saints liberally to the perfidious nation had handed over, a little after the bearers of his own body, very famished, by the Monks were filled: into so great destitution indeed they had fallen, that one of the royal household, his breeches for food, not without shame, professed to have given.

[52] The Sammarthani, while the rest of the Abbots up to their own times, [The 2nd part of the Chronicle, still unpublished, up to the year 1392 is wished for.] and beyond the half of the 17th century, they pursue; when they come to the year 1392, and to the successor to be given to Gerard II, then deceased, they allege the Chronicle of St. Martialis not yet published in print, which there I believe ends: because, the Abbots being then named, there is no longer added any note of a year, so that it can be presumed that here it ends, the other names by another hand having been inscribed. If that were to come out, perhaps from it we would learn, that then this Royal Abbey came into the power of Commendatory Abbots, under whom so languished the monastic vigor, that, John de Langeac sitting in the Cathedra of Limoges, The Abbey given in commendam although formerly an Abbot of the Cistercian Order, a pious man and well deserving of various churches (but he sat in the year 1534, and died 1541), the Monks of St. Martialis are read to have been restored into their former secular state, in the aforesaid Sammarthani, vol. 2 on the Bishops; when the title of Abbot, more than the thing, obtained Robert de Lenoncourt. This man, from Prior of La Charité of St. Mary on the Loire, The Monks are changed into Canons in the 16th century. made also Abbot of Barbeau or Sari-portus, of the Cistercian Order, then in the year 14 [1514] Bishop of Châlons, and four years after Cardinal of the Holy Roman Church, finally also Archbishop of Arles and of Toulouse, is much himself praised by the Gallic writers; but in royal affairs and legations so involved, that little care he could bestow on the Monks committed to him.

[53] At the fifteenth mile from the metropolis of Siena to the West; across the river Elsa, paved with the Graccian bridge, one mile, there was once a town, now a city it is, In the territory of Siena taking its name from the matter, so that it is called Colle of the Elsa-valley; in the year 1595, erected into a Bishopric by the authority of Clement VIII. Here with great religion of the people St. Martialis is venerated, on account of the opinion grown there, that, passing from Rome into Aquitaine, the Disciple of Christ and of Peter, first cast the seeds of faith for his forebears, who then inhabited the neighboring Gracciano; The church of St. Martialis, nay even they show a huge tomb, in which was once buried St. Austriclinianus, until St. Martialis, the staff of St. Peter being brought from Rome, raised him; in exactly the same manner in which the people of Trier narrate, that by their St. Eucharius St. Maternus was made alive; so that it can be doubted from which to the other the assertion and belief of the miracle was transferred. Above this tomb, an old church, dedicated to St. Martialis, is seen so built, that the mouth of the tomb lies open outside on the right side, itself then under the foundations extends into the church, held in great veneration by all. That church is distant very near from the city of Colle, which is wont to run thither devoutly, especially on all the sixth ferias Fridays of the month of March, on account of the frequent graces, which thence the faithful, sound and sick, believe themselves to bring back.

[54] where he raised St. Austriclinianus, So at length and at large narrates Gregorio Lombardelli, in ch. 8 of the Life of St. Martialis, which in the year 1595 he wrote and published in Italian, at the request of Nicolas Sabolini the Archpriest of Colle, having premised much about his labor, often approved, in describing and enlarging the Lives of very many Saints, but more to be approved by us and more useful in the future, if he had indulged less in his luxuriant style, and pressed more closely upon the ancient monuments whence he drew his own, or had even given them in their original form: for certain of those we wish for, hitherto not found in the very places whence he had them; nor elsewhere easily to be found. Whence it cannot be known for certain, how much to the original Acts Lombardelli added of his own. But we can estimate something from those things which have been found, whence the occasion was given to Lombardelli of writing the life, and namely from the Acts of St. Martialis, already long ago, as I said at the beginning, printed, and in their bulk not exceeding the bulk of the first sixteen chapters of his book, which he himself into Chapters altogether four and fifty extended; with an honest indeed and pious endeavor, but with little care of examining the truth, or at least of distinguishing the probable. Hence it comes about that suspect to us becomes the too prolix verbosity of the credulous man, even in the Appendix of that Life which into thirteen chapters he enlarged, from the verbal report of a certain Priest Leonard de Corliac, of the parish of Pazzoli (the maps note Panozol, about two thousand paces from the city of Limoges across the Vienne) with whom, proceeding from Rome to Naples, all his words he noted by memory; nor afterward, when those things which from Gaul he had pledged to send in writing did not appear, did he hasten to commit it to print, in the same year in which he had published the Life.

[55] not without faults, How difficult it was for one writing thus not to err, is ready for anyone to understand. First certainly in the first chapter occurs at once a capital falsity, by which it is asserted that the first cathedral church of Limoges, dedicated to St. Martialis, even today is called by his name: when from what has been said it is most certain, that this is St. Stephen's; but the Abbatial church of St. Martialis is outside the city, in the place where St. Austriclinianus is believed first to have been buried, whence it never long was absent. Meanwhile it is said that into the aforesaid Cathedral, and so within the city, six hundred years after the Saint's death, from the place of his first burial, with most solemn pomp was translated the body, then found wholly entire, as if of one sleeping, not even a hair lacking or the skin grazed, with the fragrance of a heavenly odor. It is added, and with fables about the elevation of the incorrupt body that the Head, separately outside the tomb, was kept in a most precious vessel, from which therefore God thereafter permitted the flesh and skin with the hairs to flow away; that on the bare bone thereafter might appear the signs of the five fingers of Christ, neither while he lived, nor up to that time ever seen, and invisibly then impressed, when, placing his hand on the five-year-old [boy], the Savior said; Unless you become like this little one, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. This

writer also shows that he forgot, what in the Life ch. 2 he said, after 600 years. that Martialis was fifteen years old, when he came to the discipleship of Christ: although neither was such an age sufficient for so many mysteries, at which, while Christ was preaching and suffering, he is reported to have been present.

[56] The Author then narrates in ch. 7, how, the guards sleeping, the sacred pledge once snatched, the snatchers being struck with blindness, Those attempting to carry off the Relics are punished could not be carried off from the church: at another time others attempting the same by armed force in full day, were forbidden by the Saint appearing; and a third time finally the guards being corrupted with money, certain men substituted another skull for it, on which fraudulently they had painted those same five marks of the fingers, who however, failing on the way and struck with blindness, were compelled to confess the fraud done by them, and to restore the true head. Which last writing, Lombardelli ought to have considered, that those marks could also have been induced on the first head with pigments, to make credit for the fable premised; just as it can be believed of him, that near Marseilles is shown, as belonging to the head of Mary Magdalene, that it was kept whole from the touch of Christ, repelling her and saying, "Touch me not." All which things would better be tacitly abolished, than that the truth of the holy Relics, obscured by such ravings, should be exposed to the danger of just doubt and distrust among the more prudent Catholics, to say nothing of the non-Catholics, who thence catch occasion of laughter for themselves.

[57] The time of those alleged miracles is in no way expressed; only it is added, that the last fruit was, that, moved by this, the Clergy and Bishop, who up to then content once a year most festively to venerate their Saint Patron, to which other miracles are done. thereafter instituted that every week they should have one day proper to him, with a solemn Mass and Office, as on the feast; and that they keep this to this day: Such a use indeed, taking the example from the Minor Friars and the Preachers, introduced, cannot be ancient; but whether indeed it is so observed, the people of Limoges will know how to say, who in such matters are to be more certainly believed; as also whether among them the Saint is held a special Patron of infants; and that very many of this kind commended to him are believed to have been raised from the dead, and that no one further in the whole diocese of Limoges is possessed by a demon. Likewise, that the Saint once appeared openly to all, once to quell a popular sedition, at other times to extinguish in his church and city which several things, with the exemplary punishment of certain blasphemers, here briefly indicated, make a whole chapter for Lombardelli; worthy, if they be true, to be known by a more certain account and testimony.

[58] Yet the form and ornament of the church, and of the altar and shrine of St. Martialis, which in the first three Chapters are minutely described, we could believe, a truthful account being received, if anything could be safely believed to a writer who so easily vends his own or others' dreams. The truth does not need our fiction, and to St. Martialis his most deserved honor will stand, without praisers so indiscreet: among whom also can seem to be reckoned, those who wish that he passed from the Discipleship of St. John the Baptist to Christ, and so ascribe him to the Carmelites.